#it is. SO scary to use that tag. as like someone who is still learning

[deesseshesca]

PAC What lesson is this situationship trying to slide into my DMs? (18+)

You are stuck giving all that you got ...

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PILE 1 

Y’all are POC. 

You use your love to destroy. Stop talking with me by using bad poetry. Enough is enough. Y’all should stick to math. Not everyone that loves Lana Del Rey is meant to be a big writer. Some are meant to be engineer and is ok pile 1. Your guys are gashlighter, manipulators, whore but never broke. Y’all will use love to eat something. I feel like y’all just get in a relationship to get free food. I just got a vision of somebody in their pj in their bed choosing from their roaster who is going to have the pleasure to pay for their food. Some of y’all are staying with your cheater of a partner because they always offer amazing gifts when they feel guilty. Designer bad, baecation and concert ticket. Y’all may be in a relationship and you still fucking on your boy bff. I just heard y’all say ‘’ You always need to keep an eater close (wink)’’. You felt so safe to share that with me … Anyways Pile 1 … stop being a red flag. (Hum .. hum before y’all retirer can u show me how ? (my spirit guys looking at me) What ? You would do it 2 for a check …) 

2. You need to stop being dumb. Y’all need to be more careful. You're out there with a restaurant name in your contact, you don’t delete text and nudes. When your partner finds out you stay defensive when you are caught on 4k. I just got a vision of your sex tape and we can see you clearly, giggle and  shit. Not y’all in your Kim K era. Babe you're not Future and a tower moment is coming your way. Yes. you will pay for all the heartbreak you did. So enjoy because what’s about to hit is inevitable. C’mon you did not think this playing around is going to last forever. 

What's their love language according to the cards – text, treats, or trauma bonding?

Text

The person you are currently messing with, they love to keep up with you. They love to text you throughout the day the most basic things. They love to send you memes, tiktoks, reels. Y’all may even still be doing Streaks. They love taking pictures of you without you knowing it. They love your face when you are focused on a task or doing your homework. They love sending you money. Unlike Pile 2, your person loves when you are asking them instead of them giving it to you. Is like they love to feel and hear in some shape way or form that they are needed in your life. Almost like they are in competition with other suitors and they think that they are winning. 

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PILE 2

I’m getting a very sinister vibe from y’all. Y’all are maybe worshipers of Lucifer or be very deep into the goth culture. Y’all may be self-harming or you are going through extreme depression . Y’all may have lost someone extremely close to you. 

This is a DUAL POV. Your partner came in  fucking strong and did not want to let me go. But I don’t ever feel like they are going to be reading this, that’s why for their POV, I still use ‘’ They’’. 

Feminine Energy. 

You need to learn to accept the love you give out. You have a heart full of love and you are not scared to pour it into other people's cups but when it comes to you, you are nowhere to be found. You keep everyone at arm length while genuinely being there for them. You will always be an open ear for them. You don’t mind tagging along to a very scary appointment if he needs it.  You don’t mind staying awake on the phone because they have night terrors. You don’t even mind giving your all in the bedroom. You always make sure they are pleased. You always make sure they know they are loved and their voice matters. They especially love when  you give them head. Your mouth feels amazing. They think you are gorgeous when you are going down on them. Your hair in a ponytail so they can truly enjoy the beauty of your face (Ok.. Pile 2 … Face cards never decline !). They love to see your eyes full of lust while your mouth is sweet like honey. I’m hearing:’’ Ok now I am going to suck. Baby you tell me if you need me to stop.’’ After you are done give them a handjob. In my vision they are still fully clothed (even have their coat on (Damm y’all not even going to take off the coat… Not y’all fucking in winter attire)). But when is their turn, no show. I’m hearing : ‘’ My turn now’’. You are still in your panties and a big t-shirt. ‘’ Nah … I’m ok…’’ you put yourself under the cover. That makes them feel like a piece of shit. I feel like y’all be doing that because you don’t think you have a pretty pussy. But babe… is more than sex. You refuse to admit that you care. You tell them the only reason you cuddle is because you are cold. You tell them the only reason you go on a drive at night is because you hate driving but love music. The only reason you help them study is to make sure you understand the subject enough. You give love while making sure he knows that it is not that deep. That kind of hurt. 

Stop making your partner feel useless. The person that you are dealing with doesn't feel needed in your life. You treat them like you can’t depend on them. Some of you even walk 45 minutes from your house to school (even in high heels from home to work) because your car broke down. Instead of calling them to pick you, they find out when you got there. It really wasn’t your intention to make them frustrated or scared for you. Some of you ignore them when life goes hard. When depression  hits a tap a bit too much and you are in bed incapable of communicating with the outside world. They would love you to at least text I am ok but can’t talk right now. Make them feel like shit that you don't think they are worth enough to open up. When you need help you don’t ask for them. When you want space you disappear. 

3. They hate the way you don’t defend yourself. It might be specific to people with abusive families. If your parents are physically abusive, I’m seeing : Both of y’all cuddle in his bedroom (he may have red cover) and he asks why you are shivering but you brush it off with ‘’ Oh, I’m cold’’. But really the contact of your clothes with the wounds hurt. They cuddle you but you don’t relax, actually you get stiffer. You try to not make them look under your shirt but they saw it all. I’m hearing y’all tell me; ‘’ It happened one time !’’. They are answering; ‘’ One to many fucking time.’’. You are not lying it was a one time type of shit but still it was fucking mess up. The one with the abusive verbal parents, I got a vision of them going through your phone. At first they thought it was a boy blowing up your phone (y’all have another name for your mom in your phone) but actually it was your mom telling the worst kind of shit. I hope you slowly, I should have never kept you, you are nothing but a useless slut. Then you walk in and you brush it off. ‘’ Until I found out it was because of some fucking dishes.’’ (Well thank you for the input, maybe soon to be bf). Anyways no matter the scenario, they fucking hate the fact that u refuse to anything because you know it will only get worse. They are in your life to show you that babe … this is the worst. You are trying to save yourself from the worst while living in it. 

What's their love language according to the cards – text, treats, or trauma bonding?

 Treats 

They love doing stuff for you. Especially with their hands. Some of you have verbally abusive and alcoholic mothers. One day she went in your room and mess it the fuck up. And your men re-purchase a vanity and build it for you. It was a mini (huge) surprise for you. They may have also helped you set up your bed frame. They also like to bake for you. They love to go pick up your Starbucks orders and bring it to your school (some of y’all may go to cosmetology school). They hate when you use your money and you hate using their money. They are so petty, they just say ‘’ Well your money is for everything your mom broke … my money is for you’’. Not them shutting you up on Tumblr, Sir…They love treating you like princess. The reason … is your smile. When you smile it is like a whole sun is on their phone (they may have your face as their lock screen),in their bedroom, in the car. LOOOOL ! You are like the sun in the teletubbies. 

Masculine energy. 

Not them asking for a whole reading for themself. Sir… please go book on Ko-fi. Out here making me work extra on an empty stomach (smh). 

They are going through a hard phase in their depression. 

They can’t imagine a future with you. HA ! Don’t be scared. I just saw someone holding their heart… Lol. ‘’ Well you could have worded it differently …’’ Sir, this is my blog … CAN A GIRL CLICKBAIT IN FUCKING PEACE ? Girl, come get your man, he is getting on my nerves. You can let go of your tits. What actually is happening is they don’t think they are going to make it past a certain age. Stop holding your tit … (I’m just clickbaiting rn … sometimes I enjoy being dramatic … what ? I am a writer after all). People around them  always seem to die at a specific age because of their mental health, substance abuse or misery. But there’s age in their family in which most don’t pass and in the state they are in … they don’t think they are going to be different. Maybe their bff ended their life and they think they are next. That destiny only enjoys torturing them. They see you old and gray with your teletubbies smile running around in your backyard (hum… weird…) but it is like from the bottom of their soul they think they will be there. 

They don’t know their light. You came into their life to show them that there’s more good in them than they think. Maybe they are from a family where there’s more people in jail than free. Or more people die more because of addiction than old age. So all their life nobody gives a damn about them. Why would they care for the mess up kid in the fucked up family ? Is like they are multiple generations of fucked up. You showed them their light. The fact that they always answer your call no matter the time, they also serve you, they also go to work for you. All those actions prove their love but also their commitment at being better than the rest. They know how to budget, keep a job, take care of their health, etc. They just need the right motivation. 

What's their love language according to the cards – text, treats, or trauma bonding?

 Trauma bonding

First they love you. Second, their intentions are pure. It is just that my question can give a bit of a clickbait vibe, y’all know that I live for the drama (rarely … I just hate basic questions …). You are their safe place. They love having sex with. They love seeing in red lingerie.  They love the push up bra, the extremely thin pantie, the stocking, the way you did your hair and makeup just to end up being a sucking them the fuck up. They also love when you are drooling with spit from how big they are. They love touching you. They love cuddling you. I don’t feel like y’all make love. Y’all are way more rough in between the sheets. They love aftercare. They love taking care of you. They love taking a towel and cleaning you up or running a bath for the both of y’all. They love taking a shower with you (it may be mandatory activity everytime y’all sleepover to their house). They love cuddling you. They just love you ! They hate any kind of space between y’all. You are the only person to whom they open up too. They love the fact that you never rush them. They love the fact that you try to give them tips to cope in a better way. They love the fact that you believe they can be a better man. 

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PILE 3

You guys are the children of divorce parents. They always took care of you. You always had the newest clothes and shoes. You always had the newest technology gadgets. They put you in private school and you had a luxurious car as a gift. Yet, you grew up watching your dad being abusive very severely to your mom physically. You swore you were going to be different … but  here we are….  I don’t think y’all are physically violent to anyone but your anger is something. Is not like is coming out of no where but the stuff y’all do when you are loosing it is fucking questionable. If it was not for your beauty and money … y’all would be in JAIL ! 

Y’all need to learn to what the fuck a patnership is. You don’t like when people tell you what to do. Well sometimes it is needed. Also I am getting that a person just stating their opinion can piss you off. But ruffling feathers is part of  a relationship. Is also the fault of your partner because how is he/she going to get mad at you because you attract attention. Like you are a pretty boy/girl so for sure you are going to attract isn’t how they got you. Getting mad at you because you are wearing a short skirt like they were not in the same instagram profile liking that very same picture of you in it. You can’t get mad at baddie consequences when you bag one. On the other hand the way you show that anger ain’t it. The screaming, the destroying or even the blocking his/her phone number no, no , no. Y’all need to create a safe place to communicate and allow opinions that hurt you. Because in a safe place every emotion is valuable even if it is not factual. Is for both of y’all to find a way to explain yourself with love and care. 

2. With kind intention ONLY…Y’all need therapy because that’s the reason you can’t keep nobody close. Is not just that person is a friend, coworker, or even family member. I know you want someone to see past all that anger because you are so much more than that. You are brilliant, you are pretty, you are elegant, you speak multiple languages, you are multi-talented, you are excellent at study, you have great life hygiene, you are kind and extremely giving but girl… that monster inside of you needs to be tame. There’s only so much that a rage room can do. I know it is not your fault … your parents made you that way. With the constant screaming, beating, and even choking. It’s so fuck up to be responsable for a healing from trauma we never ask for. But not doing it is going to cost you all the love you are meant to receive. 

3. Stop suppressing your emotions. This situationship makes you realize how bad your emotional state actually is. Because being in a relationship with someone put you in a situation where all your triggers are in the open. You can’t run away, you can’t act like nothing is going on, you can’t play it cool. Because everything is too much, you feel too much so act impulsively. From the exterior, you have that facade of the perfect child. That front is a huge source of stress. You wish it to be true but you know damn well that you are far from it. You are always one trigger away from breaking your protection. That’ s a fucking source of stress on it’s on. Admit that you are angry and mad. Being always happy is killing you slowly. Y’all make me think of the red hair in Desperate Housewive. 

4. Gradual numbness. Since reacting doesn't work for you. When you are mad all the people in your life tend to forget all the good you did to them and all the good living within you. You are slowly running in a hole of feeling nothing. Going from feeling too much to feeling nada. 

What's their love language according to the cards – text, treats, or trauma bonding? 

Text

They love texting you. Honestly I feel y’all recently broke up but even if it has been a while they still love you so much. They are rooting for you. They also love the fact that the only communication between y’all 2 is texting. They can’t handle all you are but that does not mean they don’t love all of you 2. They love staying on the phone talking about everything. They love how educated you are on many subjects. They love your voice. Damm do they love your voice. Y’all have a pretty voice. They would never admit it but they love your voice even when  you are yelling at them. They love your moan and they still masturbate to your voice audio. Y’all may still practice phone sex because they can’t have enough of you. You are genuinely the most perfect human they've ever seen. Rightfully so, y’all have a very proportionate body, beautiful brown eyes and full tits. They have flashbacks of touching you not in a sexual way but they miss having their hand on you. You have one of the softest skin. 

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2) Wanna know the love story the universe has for you? 💫 In 8 parts, I spill all: first meet, first kiss, confession, sexy time, and more. Don’t miss out! 👀💖 (LINK)

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[lesbianmontrosepretty]

silly little ethersea doodles<3

guess who wants to get good at drawing and also happens to be relistening to taz ethersea (along w/ a bunch of lovely folks over on the blink shark discord) :)

so i've decided! to try (big emphasis on try) to do a little drawing for every episode I listen to! most definitely nothing fancy.

i would like to ask anyone looking at these to please be kind, since i am a beginner at art and am mainly doing this for my own enjoyment, as well as to share my silly little brain thoughts with the internet, but don't expect them to be like. amazing ahahah. we're just here to rotate our sea blorbos like a microwave<3 (if you want content where i actually know what i'm doing you can always check out my writing blog or my ao3 wink wink nudge nudge)

thinking about tagging them with #ethersea.jpg but idk? might do #lex relistens to ethersea. might do both. either way, i'm looking forward to it! should be posting the first ones (prologue 1 through ep. 2) in the next few days! ahh exciting!

[ceilidho]

prompt: you keep seeing apparitions of a dead special forces operative who's been haunting the barracks. (light angst; nsfw) (actual ghost simon riley)

-

War dogs chewed up and spat out by the machinery of war.

It is an incalculable blow to learn of his death. Worse still that you learn of it by happenstance, one officer talking to another, only listening in because it’s been weeks since you’ve seen him and their voices go hushed in that way that makes your ears prick up. You’re sitting at a nearby table in the canteen when someone says the single most devastating words that have ever been spoken near you.

“They weren’t able to recover the whole body, just some of it. Pretty gruesome. Don’t know if you ever met him, but he was an alright guy—pretty quiet. Scary, yeah, but—I don’t know. He was fair. Got the job done though. Soap’s taking it pretty hard.”

You barely breathe at the news. Something is squeezing your heart until it overfills on the other side. 

You walk around base in a daze after that. It’s not anyone’s fault that you aren’t notified—no one was supposed to know. Your whole arrangement with Simon was predicated on the knowledge that it would never be revealed to your commanding officers or the rest of the infantry. Made sense at the time. Makes less sense now when your world is falling apart and you have no way of even requesting Ghost’s dog tags. 

Pain holds you upright like a splint while it also tries to smother you. You crawl back to your barracks after training the recruits, voice a hoarse whisper in your throat. Showers are an optimal place to cry, when maybe you won’t be heard. Grief is not grief when there’s nowhere for it to go. 

Maybe Soap was privy enough to Ghost’s life to know. He doesn’t spend time with you, but you see him once from across the tarmac on a flight out and his gaze lingers on you. There are deep troughs under his eyes, dark even with the distance between you. His posture is still, rigid; despite his uniform being pressed and his hair being cut and gelled into place, there is something singularly heavy weighing him down.

He nods from across the way to you. You grit your jaw and nod back. 

It’s the only time you’ll ever acknowledge it. Soap never seeks you out after that—maybe it’s too painful. Maybe shared pain isn’t always enough. 

The worst is only finding out weeks later that Ghost has been buried. That’s your closure. An offhand comment from an operations officer on a smoke break. Your numb hand flicking a lighter. Rain breaking in the early twilight hours and you stand in it so long that you shiver and shake on your way back to your room. 

Lightning that crackles in the storm clouds, illuminating the place where you just stood outside while you stare from your window. Illuminating someone standing where you just were. You squint, but they round the bend to one of the other buildings before you can make them out. 

Every soldier has a story. Conducting barracks checks on staff duty only to find a soldier with half their jaw missing asking for a cigarette. A marine approaching a soldier asking for his rifle, garbed in a ripped vest from early Iraq. Squad bays known for apparitions, known for hauntings. Figures seen from the trees, the half-shadowed remains of old tanks, burned and hollowed out, suddenly upright and mobile. 

In certain barracks, soldiers won’t even leave their rooms at night to use the washroom. They’d rather piss in old bottles or hold off until morning light altogether. It’s common enough to be joked about, for soldiers to trade stories in the mess over supper, trying to spook each other with the things they’ve seen or claimed to see. 

You can tell the ones who’ve actually seen things from those who haven’t though. The ones who have are often quieter, often only laugh a little. The truth is buried in their inability to fully commit to the bit. It’s the knowing that does that.

Knowing that there are things that death cannot hide. 

The first time you see Simon again, it’s not a homecoming. You know there’s something very wrong. 

It’s 3am and someone’s standing in front of your door. You feel it before you see them, feel something like every single hair on your body standing on end and the sudden lucid thought in the middle of a dream that you need to wake up. That you need to wake up right now. 

Heart racing when your eyes snap open. Sweat already slicking the backs of your knees. You’re lying on your side, hands curled close to your face, and you feel its gaze on you like the heaviest dread you’ve ever felt in your life. You stare at the wall that your bed is pushed up against until you find the courage to roll over.

Just a shape in the dark. A dark shape. Distinct from the rest of the darkness in your room. Tall as it is wide. The slightest motion to it, like breathing or the gentle swaying of the human body when it’s allowed to be loose. 

There’s a lamp on your end table. You flick it on without tearing your eyes away from the dark shape looming by the door, but when light unveils your room, it flickers away like a bad illusion. Just a jacket hung up on the back of the door. Your heart races still. 

When the light goes off, the shadow doesn’t reappear.

It might not be him, but something’s haunting you. You spoon cereal into your mouth in the morning with a shaking hand. It’s the massive shape of a body behind the shower curtain in your private bathroom that has you certain—certain—that someone’s there until you whip it to the side and see only tile wall. You know what you saw though, and you know from the way the top of it peeked over the curtain that it was blond. 

Weeks go by. You’re in a bivy sack and a voice you recognize wakes you up for watch. It’s the same voice that used to rumble low in your ear when you let him into your bed on leave (you always used to take them at the same time, no one the wiser). You’re back on base in your room and something leans its full weight onto your bed. You wake up to him sitting on the edge of your bed, blood dripping from an old wound. Him though, skull mask and all. Eyes shadowed always, black staring at you seeing and unseeing. 

You don’t need to ask what he wants from you. He lumbers around the barracks like a wraith that only you can see. Never truer to his old moniker than he is in death. A civilian worker flirts with you one day and he winds up in the infirmary. Fell down the stairs, another sergeant tells you when you ask. You smile tight, brittle. If only. 

He slips into your bed at night when the lights are shut and you’ve turned over onto your side. You can’t see him, but the bed compresses under his weight like it did when he was alive. He’s still for a minute, stare heavy on you while you lie there motionless, waiting him out. When he finally lays a hand on your hip, you flinch at how normal it feels. Like he didn’t go out and die one day. Like it’s really him at your back dragging a hand down the curve of your hip and over your thigh.

He divests you of your pyjamas the same way he used to in motel rooms, your apartment off-base, his cabin up north that you still have the key to but can’t bring yourself to visit. You let him. Shorts pulled down and kicked to the bottom of the bed, then your underwear. Shirt rucked up so he can fit a big, rough hand over your tit. His hands are solid where they touch you, nothing ghostly about them. He squeezes like the memory of your flesh is half-gone, like he needs to sink himself into you again. 

“Missed…you…” His voice comes like a deep rumble, tectonic plates shifting over the asthenosphere. 

The hand on your breast slides up, over the delicate skin of your throat, over where your pulse goes mad and you dry swallow because there’s nothing in your mouth. Over and up the curve of your cheek, thumb pressing against your lips, curling your top lip up until you’re almost kissing it. Then he lets go, hand coming back down to your hip. 

“Simon, are you—” you start, cut off on a gasp when he lifts your leg over his hip and something presses against your opening. Notches there, sinks in hot inch after hot inch. Head spinning and breath wild when he spears you on his thick length, half-tumbling over you until you’re lying prone on your bed. Simon’s as heavy as you remember, the full weight of him keeping you trapped there. You can only take. You can only draw in a deep breath and let out the softest sounds while he presses in, 

“Had to…come back,” the ghost of your old lover says, growling into your ear. “Couldn’t…leave you here…alone.”

You wonder what’s really behind the mask this time. His hands and dick feel flesh enough, but fear still quivers in your belly because you know that whatever it is pressing you down with a firm hand on your shoulder blade, it’s not fully him. 

You’ve heard of ghosts haunting places but never people. There’s something achingly loyal about the way he fucks you though. It’s dark and hot under him, and he mouths where he can, mask pulled up finally. Not that you can see. Better that you can’t, maybe. Pulsing in and out of your cunt, silent but for his shallow intakes of breath. He feels enormous and terrifying at your back. 

A big arm still clad in his old uniform jacket is braced beside your head. Simon whispers apologies into your hair; that he pulled himself out of a grave for a second time because he couldn’t untangle his soul from yours, but he got it wrong this time around. He didn’t make it in time. 

“I won’t leave you though, love,” he says around kisses laid tender on the nape of your neck. He bites the meat of your shoulder hard enough to leave an imprint of his teeth. “Never gonna leave you.” His words make you slicker, hotter; tightening around him until he snarls and fucks more viciously. A promise you thought he couldn’t keep. 

In the morning, you stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror. You take off your shirt and turn around. There’s a red bite mark on your upper left shoulder and it aches when you touch it.

[cheapshrimpysheep]

First Date - Diasomnia

SUMMARY: What would your first date with him be like? I know first dates might not go so well, but let's pretend these are different. ;)

CHARACTERS: Malleus Draconia; Silver; Sebek Zigvolt & Lilia Vanrouge

TAGS: Fluff; GN Reader; Flirting; Kissing

WARNING: None. Except maybe a little spoiler about Silver that he tells in Twisted Halloween: Spectral Soiree

WORD COUNT: An average of 710 words per character.

Heartslabyul / Savanaclaw / Octavinelle / Scarabia / Pomefiore / Ignihyde / Diasomnia

COMMENTS: I think Diasomnia is the hardest dorm to write for me. That's because, apart from Malleus, I don't have many romantic feelings for the others. I like them, I love Lilia, but not in that way. But I still try my best to write something that I think you will like. I just hope it's good enough.

I hope you enjoy ;)

Aaaah, the day has finally arrived. Malleus already wanted to ask you on a date for a long time. But with his status, doing something like that in public wasn't a good idea. Something like that being public knowledge could be bad for him and especially for you. After all, he learned from a young age to deal with rumors and social pressure. Besides, no one in their right mind would mess with him. But not only are you human, you can't even use magic. He doesn't even want to think about how your life could be affected because of him. At least for now.

So your first date would have to be discreet and even a secret. Fortunately, you two are quite fans of secrets. He doesn't tell you where he's going to take you. You only find out when the two of you are already in the front yard of the ruins of an abandoned mansion. If you also like abandoned places like him (and me) you will find that mansion fascinating! If you're not a big fan, maybe you'll be a little scared. But either way, you'll find it a strange and perhaps a little disappointing choice for a first date to say the least.

“Something the matter?” he asks you. You say no, that you're just intrigued and curious to know why he chose that place. He smiles, amused. “Then we must enter, to satisfy your curiosity.” he takes a step in front and extends his hand to you. “Shall we?” You take it and the two walk hand in hand through the undone front yard.

That place make you feel a little unease, so you end up squeezing his hand and taking your other hand to his arm, like hugging it. It makes him happy, knowing that you see him as someone who will protect you.

As soon as you walk through the front doors, you see that, despite being slightly run-down, the interior is magnificent. A mansion so gorgeous that seeing it in ruins even feels like blasphemy. He can see it in your face which makes him laugh. You are still holding hands, so he leads you to the dining room while he tells you a little about the history of that mansion. Nothing too scary. People had to evacuate many years ago and just never came back.

The dining room still had the long table, the chairs, the furniture, a few damaged paintings and even a vase of dead flowers in the middle of the table. He pulls out one of the chairs for you to sit on. This one was in bad shape, but as soon as he touched it, it instantly restored itself. You sit down, and he loves the way you're looking at him, intrigued to know what he's going to do.

Standing beside you and smiling at you, he snaps his fingers. And the entire room is restored with his magic. As if time were turning back to his state of glory. He never took his eyes off you. Your smile is the most beautiful thing in the entire mansion. And you are surprised again when the three ghosts of the Ramshackle Dorm appear as butlers to serve you dinner. Malleus asked them for that favor. Of course, your favourite dishes.

He sits right next to you. “Tell me, is this good enough for a first date? Should I restore the entire mansion and the garden as well?” You tell him how you feel, that it's more than enough, that it's one of the most beautiful things anyone's ever done for you. He takes your hands in his and look you in the eyes “I'm glad this pleases you so much. But something inside me wants a little more than this. I'm looking forward to the day when we'll be just like this, but in my castle and with my grandmother, the queen, getting to know you and seeing you as I do.” and he caresses your cheek.

You tell him how much you look forward to that day too, while smiling and bringing your forehead closer to his. After these touch each other, it's your lips' turn.

It will probably have to be you asking Silver out on a first date to wait for him to do it. Not that he didn't want to ask you, but he's not exactly the best in that department. He can be a little... clueless. You will catch him by surprise with your invitation. “A date? No, it's not that I don't want to go on one with you. It's quite the opposite. I'm sorry I didn't express it in the better way.” He gives you his sweetest smile and blushes a little “I-I would love to go on a date with you.”

When you ask about what you could do on this date, he asks you to let him be the one to prepare everything. Since it's the least he can do for not being the one inviting you. That and since he's from Twisted Wonderland, he might have an easier time figuring out places you can go together.

He's a simple, sweet guy who made the mistake of asking his dad for ideas. Luckily he is aware that bungee jumping would not be a good first date idea. Okay, okay, but after messing with his son for a bit, Lilia still manages to give a good tip: go to a place with animals and work your magic... Not your real magic, dummy.

Well, the only thing he can remember is a picnic. He just hope it's not too boring for you. He doesn't do anything too elaborate. Like I said, he's a simple guy. But the place he chose to take you was beautiful. a small glade in the forest on the edge of a small peaceful river. You can hear the water of the river mixed with the birds singing.

You hold the basket as he spreads out the picnic blanket. And suddenly, at the two opposite ends of the blanket, two little birds appear to help him spread it out. You can't hide your surprise and it makes him smile in amusement. You sit down and start your picnic. And some animals appear while you are distracted by each other.

You begin to notice that new birds of other colours have appeared. Squirrels, with both those big fluffy tails and the short-tailed ones. And rabbits, some gray and some brown. Silver sees the way you look at them, the face of someone who wants to pet them. So he uses his "magic" to make the animals approach him and you. Thanks to it, you can pet all those animals, birds, squirrels and rabbits. You may not realize it, but he smiles while seeing your own smile.

Suddenly, those animals start running away. But you don't know why. Until you hears very heavy footsteps approaching. Silver automatically stands and takes a defensive position in front of you to protect you. From the middle of the trees a big bear appears! You get scared, but Silver doesn't. In fact, he even relaxes a little. The bear itself is not even standing, it is standing on all fours and does not look angry.

Silver turns to you, smiling and extends a hand to you who were still sitting on the blanket. “Do not be afraid. I know this bear.” You look at him in shock. “Everything is fine. She just know I was here and wanted to say hello. Would you like to meet her?” You take his hand and he helps you up. He slowly approaches the bear, without taking his hands off your shoulders. He takes your hand and holds it out to the bear, who sniffs it and then lowers her head to let you pet her. A few seconds later you hear some small grunts near your feet. Cub bears!

His father was right. You were so happy playing with those cute little cubs. And even Mama Bear thought she should help you two out a little bit. She pushes you with her muzzle so you fall into Silver's arms. And you take the opportunity to hug him and tell him how amazing that date was being. And if you kiss him on the cheek, he'll kiss your cheek right back, until the two of you are on each other's lips.

(Lilia may or may not be spying on you two and celebrating in silence.)

How did you do that? All people who know Sebek are incredulous! It took a long time to arrive this moment. And meanwhile, the way he treats you has changed. He still calls you Human, but this time it's more like a pet name, a bit like Malleus calls you Child of Man. And he smiles at you a lot more, although most of the time he still has that serious grimace of his. And how did he invite you on the date?

“HUMAN!” he catches your attention and approaches you. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” The two of you move away from the others to speak more privately. And he starts to blush “I... um...” he takes a deep breath “Would you like to come with me on a date?” You often hear people saying that phrase in another word order, but still you accept, laughing a little. “You... EXCELLENT!” he smiles at you, the kind of smile he only gave Malleus. And says he will pick you up the next afternoon.

He knocks effusively on the door, so much so that it scares you. When you open the door, the first thing you see is a huge bouquet of chrysanthemums in your favourite colours. You pick it up and hold it in your arms. You look at Sebek and... um... I mean he looks very handsome and elegant, but was a suit like that needed for a first date? He looked more like he was in the new Operation Proposal group. Nonetheless, the sight of him in that suit could make you blush. He had a confident smile on his face until he looks at your clothes. Well, he didn't warn you that it was going to be that kind of date. So you dressed for a "normal" one.

“WHAT IS THAT? Don't tell me you don't have date clothes! You should have told me! I would have provided you with the best outfit for the occasion!” You argue with him a bit about there being different types of dates and he didn't specify the type of date because he wanted to surprise you. “*Sigh* You’re right. I apologize for not giving you enough information to choose your outfit correctly.” Fortunately, you had more suitable clothing for the occasion. You go up to your room to change and when you come down, you can see his smug face blush.

He takes you to... Diasomnia. He takes immense pride in his dorm and wanted to get you to the best place possible. He has prepared a room especially for the two of you. With the help of Lilia, Silver and maybe even Malleus. (Let's pretend in this "reality", Malleus isn't that attached to you) And, surprise or not: a candlelit dinner. In this case with green fire. Lilia told him it was a classic.

The main course was a typical traditional Briar Valley dish. But dessert was your favourite. Yes, there were times when he spoke of Malleus. You cannot change it on him. And later, somehow, you ended up talking about his parents. You start to tease him about his mother falling in love with a "mere" human. Couldn't that be a parallel with the two of you as well?

“Do not be ridiculous! I would never fall in love with a mere human! My standers are reasonably higher than that.” And if you ask him why you two are on a date: “Weren't you paying attention to what I was saying? I said that I would never fall in love with a mere human. I cannot believe you identify as one! Do you really believe that a mere human would do everything you've done? There are humans capable of using magic, who would never reach your heels. So, never again believe that you are on such a low level, do you hear me?!”

You smile, more flattered than ever. Which makes him smile too. This is your chance to challenge him to prove how special he really thinks you are. How? How about a kiss? After all, this is a date, isn't it?

The way Lilia asked you out on a date was so... him... that you didn't even know if he was just joking or being serious. Either way, you accepted it. Which seemed to surprise him a little. “Khee hee hee. Very well then. A date shall be.” If you ask when, he'll smirk at you. “You enjoy surprises as well, correct?” then he kisses your cheek and disappears.

You would be expecting him to show up at least the next day, right? And that's why he only appears the day after that. Or rather, the night after that. You hear knocking on your window, you draw the curtains, but you see nothing. Until he suddenly appears upside down outside. After the scare he gave you, you open the window.

“Khee hee. Good evening, prefect.” He looks at the pajamas you have on. “It's not what I expected you to wear for our date, but it sure is different. Khee hee, worry not. I'll give you time to change. I'll wait for you in the living room.” Before he leaves your room, you try to ask him where you are going so you know what to wear. “Um... very well, I'll give you a hint: dress to have fun.” And that's the only clue he gives you. Just in case, you dress in a little more sporty style, but still pretty.

He tells you it's an excellent choice and how good that outfit looks on you. You walk to the Mirror chamber for, through the looking glass, him to take you to... an Amusement Park. And since it's already night, the park is all lit up with the colours of the rides and food stalls. Coming from a kingdom solely reliant on magic, this sort of things are fascinating to him. And better, since magic is not necessary to have fun there, nothing prevents you from having as much fun as he does.

He will try to take you to the most crazy rides. If you like that, great! You are going to be the bravest couple in the entire park. Which will contrast with how cute you two are on the outside. If you don't like these rides. There is absolutely no problem. He will ride with you wherever you want and feel comfortable riding. The priority is you. If you are having fun, he will be having fun with you. That and, let's face it, this guy probably already did crazier things than riding a roller-coaster. Which means your fun is more important.

After the rides, you have dinner together at one of the food stalls. He offers to pay for everything. Old chivalry. After eating and before leaving, he suggests that the two of you take a look at the prize booths. He would like the two of you to carry away some good memories of that day.

A small plush of a black and pink bat catches your eye and you tell Lilia how much that plush reminds you of him. Not just for the colours (and the size) but also because both are so cute! “Would you like to try to win one? I make a point of paying for your attempts.” he doesn't want you to worry about money, just having fun.

The prize is a target shooting stand. You have to blow up the balloons with a dart. You have three tries, you need to get at least two right to get that bat. But everyone fails. Lilia notices that the prize booth guy is using magic to make you fail, but doesn't comment. Instead, he pretends not to have noticed and offers to win the plush for you himself.

Fooled by his cute appearance, the guy does the same trick on him, but it fails miserably. With just a quick gesture, he hits the three balloons in a row. Which surprises/scares the booth guy. He could get the highest prize, but he just wants the little bat. “Oh, actually I have a proposal for you.” he says with his cute smile. “What if, instead of the highest prize, you gave us those two stuffed bats? Maybe that could also redeem you from using magic against my dear date. Surely you regret using such a low trick?” he's still smiling, but his bright red eyes are menacing.

He got the black bat with pink details for you and a pink bat with black details for himself. Now, he also had something that reminded him of you. “I hope that trick of his didn't make you sad that your attempts failed.” You say maybe at first, but after seeing Lilia in action and scaring that guy, you're even glad you failed the balloons just to see that. “Khee hee hee. Your way of seeing the positive side of things is undoubtedly irresistible.” and he kisses your cheek “Um? Why that face? Were you expecting another kind of kiss?” he smirks, as an invitation to be yourself and get what you want from him.

If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

[kaciidubs]

The Summoning | Spooktober 2023

❣ Summary: Desperate times called for desperate measures, and you may have just summoned the most desperate measure of them all. ❣  ❣ Word Count: 1.16k ❣ Warnings: Demon! Jisung, humor, smut, Reader is a wee bit sassy, Switch! Reader, Switch! Jisung, implied multiple rounds, riding, open ended ❣  ❣ Female! Reader [No use of Y/N] | You/Your pronouns ❣  ❣ Additional Tags: Han is referred to as Jisung, Ji, Baby, and Sir, Reader is referred to as Jagi, and Baby, barely edited, there's basically no plot ❣ Stray Kids Masterlist ❣ General Masterlist ❣ Spooktober 2023

You were sure you followed the incantation properly, the candles were at the right points on your - albeit crudely drawn - sigil and the pronunciation of the Latin words were damn near spot on with the YouTube video you kept bookmarked. 

So, why wasn't there currently a tall, burly demon standing in front of you, ready to snatch your soul in more ways than one?

"What the fuck?"

Standing before you, looking just as confused as you were, was a man - a man - with admittedly gorgeously styled hair, an all black outfit that some how highlighted his slim figure, and a golden cross chain hanging from his neck.

Ironic.

"What- Where-" His eyes scanned frantically around your room before settling on you, still knelt at the head of the summoning circle. "Who are you and how did you do that?! Where am I even at? Who are you?"

You bristled at his constant questioning, eyebrows furrowing, "I should be asking you who you are! I was hoping for some sort of scary horny demon who was ready to blow my back out, not whoever you are!"

"Horny demon? Blow your- Hold on, hold on." He pressed his hands to his face, muttering under his breath though you weren't able to catch what he was saying. "You... You tried summoning a demon for sex? Are you insane?!"

"No, I'm horny." You deadpanned, crossing your arms over your chest, "And you're one to judge, since you came here!"

The demon dropped his hands, eyes wide and lips - cute, plush-looking, and kissable - set in a pout, "I didn't come here on my own! You summoned me, remember?!"

Groaning, you glanced toward the notebook with your summoning notes written in it, "I guess, even though you weren't what I was expecting at all." Looking up at him again, you shrugged, "Well, if you aren't going to satisfy anything, you can just - I don't know, poof back to hell or wherever you came from?"

He froze, mouth opening and closing with stammers that made you raise an eyebrow inquisitively. "I... Well, I can't."

"Huh?"

"I can't leave until I, um... Satisfy your needs."

If you looked hard enough, you could've seen the faintest blush rising on his cheeks.

"D-Don't get this wrong, either!" He shouted, quickly falling into the defensive, "I literally can't, it's in the incantation, I'm bound to you until I satisfy the contract of your summon."

There was a beat of silence between you, the cogs in your head working double time as you processed his words and all their double entendre meanings.

"So... You're stuck with me until you-"

"-blow your back out, yes."

Sure, he may not have been the big scary demon you were hoping for, but you couldn't deny that he was attractive and he looked like he'd be a pretty good lay. Besides - when would you be able to say you summoned, and fucked, a demon?

Pushing yourself up from your knelt position, you brushed off your knees with an exaggerated huff, "Alright then," you put your hands on your hips, smirking at the brunet in front of you, "fuck me."

Within the next ten minutes you learned a few new things; the first being that his name was Jisung - or at least, that's what you caught amidst his heavenly soft lips moving rapidly against your own. The second was that there was a specific way demons operated when it came to summons, and your chant just so happened to bind onto him. The third was that he had extremely sensitive ears, and for someone so sure about initiating things, he was a mere gentle breeze away from folding to your command.

And boy, did he fold.

"Oh, fuck me-"

He laid underneath you, hair an unforgivable mess thanks to your restless fingers and face wrapped in sheer pleasure as you rode him like a woman possessed; the springs in your mattress protesting in kind.

"Fuck- Fuck, Jagi, just like that."

"I can't tell," you huffed, breaking away from your assault of the pretty skin of his neck, "if you're the one who's supposed to be fucking me," your fingers slid from his hair and to his shoulders, slowly dancing their way down to his nipples, "or if I'm the one fucking you."

"I-I tried, but you-" a whimper fell from his lips as you gently pinched at the small, perked nipples, "-didn't even g-give me a chance!"

"Give you a chance? Baby," your movements changed to slow grinds of your hips, a sinister smirk growing on your lips from the way his pouted lips fell into a small 'o'. "I gave you permission to take me, use me as you wished - show me the reason why my summon worked on you." Leaning down, your lips grazed over his, "Show me why I chose you."

The air shifted around you, sparks of excitement shooting down your spine as you felt him shiver underneath you - your only sign of a physical change before you were suddenly rolled onto your back with ease.

There was no point in hiding the delighted giggle that floated from your mouth, not when it was subsequently followed by a shocked gasp as you took in the man - or rather, demon, before you.

His irises were a deep red, rivaling the prettiest of roses, while a set of horns curled from the sides of his head before curving up at his temples, the sharp points looking more inviting than they should have been.

Your pussy clenched at the smirk he wore, teeth bearing points that surely weren't there before.

"Why you chose me, Jagi?" Jisung spoke, the newfound low register in his tone wrapping around your mind and rendering you utterly defenseless. "Want me to show you why I'm the only one worthy of ruining this little pussy? Give you the treatment you got down on your knees for?"

His hands found your thighs, sliding down to your knees to hook your legs around his lithe hips before pressing forward, sinking whatever inches escaped you back into your slick cunt.

"Well?"

Taking that as your warm invitation to speak, you nodded quickly, "Y-Yes."

He tsked, loose strands of hair falling before his eyes as he shook his head, "Yes?"

"Yes, Sir." The title fell from your lips effortlessly, almost as if it was waiting to be used all along - natural.

His smirk grew wider, and you found yourself wishing he'd show you the delicious contrast of his sharp teeth and his pillow-soft lips, if only for a moment.

Anchoring onto his knees, Jisung cocked his head as if to process the simple addition of one word, "Sir... That's a good start, baby - keep it up and I might have to stay even when the contract's up."

From that moment on, the only chant you needed was his name, your sigil now in the form of your nails on his back, and whenever you summoned him, he came - and so did you, many, many times.

✧. ┊Tagged lovelies: @goblinracha, @having-an-internal-crisis-rn, @midnightfrog625, @anyhow-everything, @bangchanbabygirlx, @sweetracha, @j-onedrabbles, @happilydeepestwonderland, @nightimescapes, @caitlyn98s, @ch4nn13luv, @ihrtlix, @sometimesleeknows, @jeonjungkookenthusiast1997, @maximumkillshot, @y-ur--i, @acker-night, @dreamescapeswriting, @specialstay, @broken-glowsticks, @s00buwu, @dancerachaslut, @junglyric, @tinyelfperson, @jj-stay, @katsukis1wife, @inlovewithmusician, @keen-li, @armystay89

✧. ┊Kinktober only: @selicua

✧. ┊If your username is in bold italics that means tumblr won't let me tag you. If you’d like to be added to the taglist, fill out this form!

[smellrain]

𝐧𝐡𝟏𝟑 - 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭

in which: nico and you had met years ago in a cold rink in canada but then lost touch for several reasons. It's hard, growing and correcting mistakes of your past but you try anyway.

tags: written, angst, hopeful ending, mentions of: depression, injuries, hospitals, doctors, etc. (masterlist)

notes: [5.1k] I have no idea what this is? I woke up, wrote the entire thing and passed out again for 2 hours. Tried polishing it through editing? Yeah. It turned out a lot different than the rest of my stuff so far, so it's scary posting this. Come & tell me if you liked it.

The ice was as harsh as it was unforgiving. 

The cold air of the rink has seeped into your bones years ago and the reddend tips of your fingers went numb a while ago, but you were used to it by now. Nothing really mattered when you got like this, too caught up in your head for anyone to reach. 

Not even yourself. 

You had been home and then suddenly not, your body already knowing what you needed before your mind caught up to it. 

The rink wasn’t open, not yet, but you had gotten a key years ago. The owner, David, had been the only one that had looked at you the same back then. There had been a knowing sort of look in his eyes when he had seen you waiting for him at the front door stepps, eyes red. 

He had given you a key, because he had seen you for who you were: a girl whose entire life had collapsed around her. 

Bronze at fifteen, silver at sixteen, gold forever out of reach. 

You could still remember the red pen tucked into your doctor’s coat. The ‘my condolences, but’, the white light, the letter in your hand, the sinking realisation that this was it. 

That you were going to be one of the several girls that had pushed their body too far.

The same way you had done everything back then you had followed the instructions of your therapist to the letter. Stretching, compressions, different exercises. Still, there was no full recovery, no chance of ever skating professionally again. 

That might be the worst part, still being able to skate but knowing that you will never be able to feel it anymore. That you were cursed to be in this limbo, never letting go of it but never being able to live for it anymore. 

The harsh sound of your blade cutting over the fresh ice was as pleasant as it was torture. You wanted more, but you had to settle for this. You had to learn that this was all you were ever going to get. 

These select few hours in the early morning, just before your classes started, before you had to start living your life. 

You could feel yourself drawing harsh breaths, but it didn’t matter. You had pushed through worse, hunger, hurt and feelings just to stand here for a bit longer. The ringing in your ear accumulated when you thought about all that you had lost, that you could never regain.

Suddenly the heavy door of the entrance fell closed. You slowed down, curious who it might be. The clock in the corner of your vision reflected a red 05:57 back at you. It was too early for it to be anyone aside from David or another person with a key, someone like you.

It was a guy, a bag in his hand and another slung over his shoulder. 

You would recognize the equipment anywhere, familiar with it in a distant way. It must be a hockey player that David had picked out out of the hundreds that frequented this place. 

For some reason you already didn’t like him. Maybe because unlike you, he had the chance of actually archiving his dreams. Bitterness was an annoying but frecent emotion that stained the back of your mouth. 

You wanted. You wanted more than this. You wanted the early morning practices, the ones after school, the rigidous schedule, the heavy monitoring. What were you without all that?

The static in your mind had been interrupted by his arrival but you hardly noticed, more focused on the way he walked down the stairs, casually like he had done so hundreds of times already.

It was almost six, which meant it was time to get off the ice anyways, so you circled a few laps, rotating your wrists and shoulders to feel if anything was off, and then made your way towards the outside of the rink. 

“You look pretty,” said the boy from where he was tying his shoelaces up on the benches. “Out on the ice, I mean.”

Something in you hurt at that, as if your heart started pulling at its own strings. It’s been a while since anyone has watched you skate,, since you let someone else watch you. There was a sharp kind of anger rising up in you that it had been him watching you which dissipated as soon as you looked back at him.

It wasn’t his fault. There really was something wrong with you.

You knew your parents didn’t approve of you being here, but they couldn’t look at you anymore when you skated, disappointed that this was how it had ended. Disappointed in you.

“Thanks,” you said, your voice completely scraped raw. You hoped he didn’t notice it. 

“I’m Nico,” he said, approaching you. He held out his hand. He wasn’t wearing gloves yet but his dark shirt had thumbholes that his thumb peeked through which was weirdly endearing on him. 

You looked back up to his face. There was a tired but polite smile plastered on it but you didn’t have the energy to give him one. Instead you simply told him your name and took his hand. Even through his layer of fabric it was warm beneath your icy fingers.

He didn’t flinch at the cold of your hand and instead started genuinely smiling which took you by surprise. People didn’t react to meeting you like this, not anymore. 

Then, without saying anything else, he took off his guards and stepped on the ice, skating around to warm up. You watched him for a bit while scraping off the excess ice and putting your skates away. 

His skating was differentthan yours; not as delicate. The beauty of it had been hammered into you from an early age on which didn’t seem to be the case form him. It was weird, not being on the ice, being the one to watch instead. 

You changed back into your shoes and walked up the steps. 

From the top, which wasn’t all that high because this rink wasn’t that big, he seemed small. You wondered if you looked like that too, if anyone had thought that when you fell down, when they had seen you sprawled on the ice at fifteen, not being able to get up again. 

A sick shudder passed through you. You wondered if you had ever gotten up from that ice.

Then you turned around, your back to him and left without saying goodbye. 

~*~

The next time you saw him again, was two days later, just after six. 

You knew you were going to be late for class but didn’t really care. Today you weren’t as cooped up in your own head, but it was still hard to let go of these stolen few hours of freedom and face reality. 

“Hey,” Nico said, “it’s you again.”

“Hello,” you said in return. He stepped on the ice and you fought off the urge to leave immediately. That would be impolite, a voice reminded you in your head, even if you didn’t want him to be here right now.

“Are you here every morning?” he asked you, falling into step beside you and therefore joining you on your cooldown laps. 

Your eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Couldn’t he just do his own thing? Did he have to come talk to you? “Yes.” 

"Dedicated. I only come every second day,” he said as if it mattered to you. You might have to leave early every second day now to avoid talking to him, which made your scowl even worse. 

“Okay.” You said instead. 

He hummed in reason but dropped the conversation after. When you took a look at him from the corner of your eye he didn’t seem deterred at your attitude, seemingly just satisfied that he got a response.

After another lap in, you hated to admit it but companionable silence, you left, without saying anything but this time he waved back at you from below. You didn’t return his gesture. 

~*~

Despite your early judgement, the two of you formed some kind of routine over the next few weeks. You came early, and sometimes you left a protein bar for him in the stands and sometimes he brought  you a hot tea for when you got off the ice. 

Still, always without fail, he joined you for a few laps. He talked about his life and sometimes asked you a few questions. Sometimes you answered him, other times you didn’t. He never pressed for answers. 

Nico told you that he was from Switzerland, which explained the heavy accent. He just joined Halifax, and he came early to work on his technique, preferring to do so in silence without his teammates chirping at him. You, in turn, told him that you had skated, professionally, before your injury. He didn’t ask for details about either of these things and you didn’t share of your own accord. 

Slowly, so slowly that you didn’t even notice, you realised that he had become your friend. 

It was strange. You hadn’t made friends in a long time. Before, you had had school friends, but because you never hung out outside of it, always training, it never deepend. 

A weird sort warmth seeped in under your skin at the thought of the two of you being friends like a steady fire that kept you warm at night.

The friends you had made while skating splintered along with your knee. 

It was hard, you knew that, to see their worst fear reflected back at them, but it was still hard for you to reach out, so you simply stopped talking to each other. 

On your bad days you thought that it was all their fault, on your good you knew that it was a mutual mistake. 

The thing about Nico was that he was hard to pin down. He was hardworking, thrived under pressure and loved hockey. He was also afraid of falling and failing, he loved sitting under the sun in the summers, feeling his skin heat up and his favorite colour was green, but he admitted that it changed every few weeks. 

You knew that this friendship wouldn’t last, not really. Neither of you had any way of reaching out to the other, and neither expressed the desire to do so but it was still nice, this tentative kinship.

~*~

“Have you ever played hockey?” he asked you, once. 

It must have been a Saturday or Sunday because you were in no hurry to get off the ice, instead basking in his company. 

“No,” you answered, simply.

He grinned, “you are missing out.”

“Really now?” you asked, teasingly, when you turned around to skate with your front to him.

“Really. I wanna teach you,” he said, leaving the choice up to you without outright asking. If you wanted to you could just brush it off and the conversation would continue. 

Instead you said, “yeah, sure, why not.”

His smile was blinding, the adoration for his sport bleeding from every inch of his skin. It was a good look on him, happiness. Distantly you wondered if anyone had ever thought that about you.

It was different, skating with a stick in your hands but it was fun. He taught you how to shoot and aim at a certain spot which you weren’t half bad at if you stood still.

Hours later when the two of you stepped off the ice your tea was cold but you hardly noticed it.

~*~

Another day you asked him what he was reaching for. 

“Olympics,” he had answered immediately but after a beat of silence he looked up as if the lights in the ceiling were stars he could wish upon. “I think I want someone to look at me and think ‘I want to do that. I want to start playing hockey.’”

You looked at him and the only thought that crossed your mind was that he was the reason you could step off the ice again, that you knew you would always be able to come back, just one more time. 

“I like that,” you said because it was true. 

He tilted his head back to you, and the way his eyes glimmered with a rare vulnerability made your breath catch. Or maybe that was just the effect he had on you, standing still, alive and just in reach.

Oh. 

That was that feeling in your chest. 

~*~

Yet another day he joined you on the ice and you immediately kicked him off again. 

“What did I say about injuries?” you asked, frustrated in a way only he could make you. 

“That they were not to be ignored,” he parroted back, his gaze between his feet as if staring at his ankle would magically heal it. 

“Exactly,” you said. Then, gentler than before, “you need to give yourself time to heal, otherwise you will never get better.”

He looked back up to where you were hovering above him. “Okay.”

You didn’t want him to have the last word. “Okay,” you said firmly and sat down next to him. 

The two migrated up to the changing rooms  where he sat on a bench with his ankle elevated while you worked through your stretches, your knewww aching in phantom pain.

~*~

Today your mind was quiet.

It was your last time and you had wanted to take it all in again, one last time. You were moving, your father had gotten a new job somewhere in New Jersey. You knew it was good, a new start away from everything, a chance to start over. 

But still, you were going to miss this. The rink, the quiet, the place you had grown up in. The place that was your prison as much as it was your salvation. 

As you looked up towards the ceiling, the lights shining down on you, the dark gary that seemed black in contrast, you thought you should cry. This was the perfect moment to, and you hadn’t yet. 

Then, the door opened. 

You were surprised because he wasn’t supposed to be here today. Nico had been here yesterday and the two of you had argued about your favorite brand of cereal, and you selfishly had wanted to leave it at that. 

To leave your friendship without having to say goodbye, without having to ever really let go of him. 

“Nico,” you breathed, before you could stop yourself. 

“Hey you,” he said, as he came up to you. You didn’t even realise that you had stopped moving. 

“It’s late,” he stated. You looked up to the clock and sure enough, it was almost twenty past. 

“Ah,” you said, uncaring. It’s not like you had school today. You wondered when he went to school, if his just started later than yours had. In all your talks you had never actually talked about it. 

And you never were going to anymore, you had to remind yourself. Suddenly it was a lot harder to breathe through the ache in your chest. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, and you knew he meant it, “you look, I don’t know, sad?”

“I’m moving,” before he could ask anything more, “like tomorrow. This is the last time I’m going to see you in a while.”

“Oh.” The expression on his face was hurt, because he must have realised that you had intended to leave without saying anything. 

“I’m sorry,” you said. “for everything.” You weren’t really sure for what, but it seemed like the right thing to say. For your intentions, the way you acted, maybe.

“It’s okay,” he said, but it wasn’t, not really. You knew that and he knew that you knew.

“I’m moving to New Jersey.”

He was quiet for a bit.”America,” he started. Then, “do you want to exchange numbers?”

You ignored the sting behind your eyes. “I’m probably going to have to get a new simcard, but you can give me yours.”

The two of you skated back to the door, from where you had stood still in the middle of the open space. He got a piece of paper and a pen from his bag and then somewhat messily tore off the corner of a worksheet and scribbled down his number in blue ink and signed it with his name.

He looked up at you but neither of you said anything for a while. What was there to say, anymore? 

“Don’t forget about me,” he ended up telling you and you reached out to hug him. He was warm under your hands, steady and you were going to miss this, him.

“Don’t forget me either,” you murmured into the crook of his neck. 

Still, in the back of your mind, you knew that you were never going to use his number. You were going to cut off your old life before it could follow you to your new one. But for once you had told him the truth, you weren’t going to forget about him, probably ever. 

And that was that. You said goodbye, waved and you left him there. He returned the gesture, face unreadable and you were sad that the last time he looked at you he wasn’t smiling.

From the top you looked down at him one last time. He seemed bigger now, compared to that first time you had looked down at him, still filled with bitterness.

Maybe that was just your imagination, or maybe it was his confidence after playing with his current team, after seeing his results pay off. 

You turned and let the door fall closed behind you. 

Then, and only then tears started to well up in your eyes. You ignored them and moved on. Always looking ahead, never back. 

Still, you kept the number tucked away safely hidden in a small corner of your wallet. A piece of him that you would always carry with you. 

~*~

You made new friends, graduated and decided to attend college. Got diagnosed with chronic depression and mild anxiety, got a boyfriend and broke it off again after three months, cried, laughed and finally lived. 

But there was part of you hidden in the corner of your wallet, too.

~*~

If you were being honest, Nico didn’t really cross your mind when your friend asked you to go to a hockey game with you. 

In a way he did, because he had been one of your few friends that played hockey, but it was more of an oh yeah, the sport Nico loved and not oh yeah I’m going to a hockey game and I wonder if Nico is still playing, I wonder if he made it to the big leagues. 

Okay, maybe that was a bit of a lie, but still. You hadn’t expected this. 

The two of you went to the Prudential Center and you were excited despite your earlier apprehension. Your phone with the blocked tags of icehockey and nhl seemed to burn a hole in your pants but it’s not like anyone would know. 

Your friend had told you a bit about the team, but if you were being honest, you could not remember any of their names, much less which position and line they played. 

When the players got announced, the home team first, you froze. Suddenly the noise of the cheers around you were completely quiet until they flooded back to you, a harsh reminder of reality.

Because it was him. That was Nico. Your Nico. Or like your past Nico.

There, with a red thirteen and a small C over his chest, was Nico. He was all grown up now, and instead of thinking wow, he is kind of attractive when he smiled at the camera, you thought, holy shit, he is really, really handsome. 

Your friend picked up on your strange behaviour. “What's wrong?”

I know him, you wanted to scream. I think he saved my life without meaning to, and I think I loved him but I never told him. What came out instead was, “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“What?” she asked, suddenly even more worried, “do you need fresh air? Or do you just want to leave?”

You wanted to stay. You wanted to shoot a puck at his head and tell him to look up at you, the way he had done back then. 

“No, don’t worry about it,” you said and when didn’t change at your reply, you added, “I’m just going to get some water. I think it might be the crowd or something.”

“Are you sure? Do you want me to come with?”

You knew how much she had been looking forward to it, and besides there was nothing she could help you with anyhow. “No, really, it’s all good. Just need to breathe for a second.”

She gave you a look, and you smiled despite wanting to curl up in a corner and cry, “if you are sure. But if anything,” she took your hand in hers, “if anything is wrong call me. I’m gonna have my phone in my hand the entire time.”

You squeezed her hand the same way your heart did at her words. “Thank you, really, but it’s okay. I'll be right back.”

Then you fled up the stands and you couldn’t help but think about the first time you had seen him, how you had left without saying anything. You looked down, just once, and spotted him immediately, as if he was the north pole to your south, your eyes drawn to him. 

He seemed even bigger now, as if he had finally grown into the steady confidence he had had, even back then. 

You smiled. He deserved it, genuinely. You were glad that he did end up making it to the big leagues, even if some part of you hurt at that. You still missed ice skating, your rink from back then, David, but most of all you missed what could have been if you hadn’t been scared. 

What could have been if you had just texted him. 

Regret was a useless emotion to feel, but all of a sudden you felt yourself drown in and you coughed once, just to ease that feeling in your throat.

Then you turned your back to the ice and walked up the rest of the stairs to the stands to get yourself some water. 

It was useless trying to think about any of it now, so you pushed the thoughts aside for later. 

~*~

A week later you were drunk. It was a Friday evening and you had finally finished the gruelling lab you had worked on for the entire day. 

You were hanging out in your friend’s room, the same friend that had taken you to the game a week before. Two of your other friends were sat ob the floor, leaning gainst the opposite bed and a warm, content feeling spread through your chest. 

You had friends now. 

“What’s wrong?” she suddenly asked from where she was sat next to you on her bed, her back against the headboard, yours against the wall adjacent to it.

“Nothing,” you answered because nothing was. 

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me, tell me,” she said, “you've been quiet ever since we came back from the game a week ago and I’ve waited long enough for you to say something, so now I’m going to.”

Had you been that obvious? Or did she just know you that well? Either way, she deserved the truth, the full truth.

“I just,” you began and stopped again, starting to peel off the sticker on your beer with the blunt edge of your nail. 

“When I was younger, I skated.” You started. You knew that she had never expressed any kind of interest in skating so you elaborated further, “really well.” Wow, you were really eloquent tonight.

“Okay,” she said, no doubt wondering where you were going with this. 

Your mind was fuzzy around the edges because of the drinks which made harder than usual to focus on your words, but it made it easier to talk about it, too. These people didn’t know about anything that had been, only what was. “I was good enough to win. Olympics, I mean.”

Suddenly one of the other two friends from the other side of the room joined in. “The Olympics?”

“Yeah,” you said, staring firmly at the bottle in your hands, not looking at any of them. “I won bronze and silver, fifteen and sixteen.”

“Holy shit,” she said, as did your other friend, but one of them remained quiet, so you looked at her. 

From the look in her eyes you knew that she knew. “And then I fell, badly. Tried to get up again but couldn’t. Went to the doctor and you know,” you trailed off, “retired. Started physiotherapy, got a lot better but…”

“Not enough to ever compete again,” she finished for you. 

“Yeah,” you said, voice hoarse. “But I couldn’t let go of it, you know? So sometimes, before school, I snuck out to the local rink and skated around just because I didn’t know anything else.”

Your friend that was next to you on the bed made an encouraging noise, and laid a hand on your knee, so you continued. 

“Then I met a guy. I was in a bad mental place, not really talking to anyone unless I had to, but we somehow became friends.”

Then you looked at them, “I don’t know, it was a weird friendship because we only ever saw each other at the rink every few days, but I felt something for him anyway. It wasn’t quite love but could have been, maybe.”

The others were still listening, and the words rushed out before you could stop yourself. “Then I moved. Wanted to leave before saying goodbye because that would hurt too much. On the day I was leaving I saw him anyway. He gave me his number but I never used it.”

“You wanted to make a clean cut?” your friend asked. 

“Yeah. It was sefish, because it wasn’t just about me, you know? I should have told him how I felt, but I didn’t.” You shook your head, “but that’s not even the point. I saw him again at the game.”

“Oh,” your friend that had dragged you to it, said. 

“Yeah,” you answered, and your other friend asked, “why didn’t you talk to him?”

The other friend, the one that had never asked you about your skating, even though she had known, even though she had every opportunity to, said, “because he was playing, right?”

“Yeah,” you said and you wanted to cry. You could still hear his name announced by the speakers. “Funny, all the time we spent together and I never knew his last name.”

“Who is it?” she asked, gentle, and you knew you could just not answer. You could bury it deep down, once and for all. But that’s not what you wanted to do, not anymore. 

“Nico Hischier.” And your friend laughed. 

“Of course it’s the captain,” she said and you couldn’t help but join in, the effects of the alcohol cursig through your veins. What were the chances, really? That he ended up in the state you had moved to all those years ago.

The others joined it. “He changed his number by now, I’m sure.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” one of them said. 

All of you were quiet for a second. “Wait, I have an idea,” she said and moved her hand from your leg and grabbed your phone. 

She gave it to you and made a motion for you to unlock it. You did and gave it back to her. From where you were sat you weren’t able to see your screen, much less what she typed on it. 

After a few seconds she gave it back to you. 

It was Nico’s instagram profile. You hesitated before clicking on his most recent post. Your other friends that had been sitting on the floor climbed up to join you. 

“Follow him,” one of them said. You could feel your heart thumping in your chest. This was not the account you had used to document your wins and training back then, but it still had your first and last name in the username, but it was on private. 

Underneath your thumb the button changed colour. “Fuck,” you said.

The other three laughed at your exclamation. “Wait, do I text him?” you asked, turning to the others. 

They all looked back at you, and one of them asked, “do you want to?”

You did. You really fucking did, but you had no idea what to say. “But what do I say? Hey, sorry for being a dick to you when we were like seventeen, I was half in love with you and didn’t know how to tell you, so I just cut you out before anything could possibly hurt me.”

One of them leaned her head on your shoulder. “If you leave out the half in love part, it’s not too bad.”

“You should also ask if he wants to meet and talk in person,” the other said. 

You opened your notes app and the four of you composed a message to him. 

Your hands were shaking and your heart was beating too fast. This was it, this was your chance and you weren’t going to let go again without a fight. This time you would stay and he could make the choice: to stay or to leave. 

Then, you hit the small blue icon and sent it and let out a quiet scream. You wouldn’t be able to take it back, not anymore. 

You threw your phone away from you onto a small patch where the blanket you were sitting on was still visible. 

Over an hour passed and you still hadn’t heard back from him. Soon after you pased out, but a quiet acceptance had settled in your stomach. He forgot. Or maybe he didn’t see the message or maybe he didn't want to talk to you again, which you couldn’t blame him for. 

But when you woke up the next morning, you had a single notification from him. 

For a second you debated not clicking on it, but that would mean standing still. It would be different this time. You would be different this time. There was an unfamiliar, new kind of determination that flickered up your spine and it reminded you of the steady ice under your skates, of the final hug the two of you had shared. Harsh, unforgiving, certain. 

You clicked on it and there was no going back now.

Nico Hischier Hello, it’s been a while.  Of course I remember you, didn’t I tell you?  For sure, I'd love to meet up and talk. Does next weekend work for you? I have a home game which makes it easier for both of us. 

notes: So. How are we feeling? Thoughts? Part 2? Please talk to me about this one because this lives in my mind rent free.

[seravphs]

beating hearts promised to bared teeth — part one: “The God Finds A Familiar” 

KITSUNE! GOJO x GOD! FEM READER; KAMISAMA HAJIMEMASHITA AU

When a kind stranger offers you his home because your gambling addict of a father can’t pay rent, you’re left in charge of a shrine - with a catch. Once you arrive at your new home, you learn a crucial fact that he conveniently left out. You’re the new god in charge, and his familiar, who now belongs to you, does not like you. What’s a new god to do, especially when she finds herself slowly falling for the fox spirit?

wc — 10k

tags — enemies to lovers, shoujo manga heroine type reader, Japanese mythology/yokai, age gap (1000 year old fox and high school girl), slowburn, cameo from Sukuna, Toji, and Nanami, cameo from original Kamisama Hajimemashita cast

part two — “The God Finds A Husband” (coming soon)

shoujo series masterlist

If your stomach growls any louder, you’ll scare off the squirrels fighting over the end of a baguette loaf by the park bench you’re sitting on. 

You’re currently in the middle of what others might describe as very hard times. To be honest, your very hard times have been going on for a while now - they just culminated at this specific moment. Regardless, these days are only temporary. You’ve promised yourself that one day, you’ll be able to smile from the bottom of your heart. 

It’s just that it was easier said than done when you weren’t homeless. Your father has never been the most reliable of men. You had to take over the household finances by the time you were eight, so you’ve always been accustomed to his lack of responsibility, but today really solidified his status in your mind as an absolutely useless, no good man. It’s unfathomable cruelty to have left his only daughter with no money, no relatives, and no home. 

You don’t want to call it cruel. For all of his faults, you still love your father. And it’s because you love him that you know this wasn’t a cruel act. Cruelty is intentional. It’s malicious. It comes from a desire to hurt. Your father has never wanted to hurt you. It’s just a byproduct of his gambling addiction. You’re collateral damage in his quest for the jackpot that would solve all his problems. 

You double over in agony at the renewed complaints from your stomach. At least you’ve gone from scaring mere squirrels to scaring passersby. That’s an upgrade, right? 

One woman clutches her purse closer as she walks past you as briskly as possible. You get it, you look bad. 

But there’s no use being resentful. Your father has been barely one step above a deadbeat all your life. At the very least, you’re used to fending for yourself. Your stomach growls again, but you’re determined to ignore it. You need a plan of action. One step after another, you’ll make it out of these troublesome times. 

Before you can start to plot, a loud cry for help catches your attention. It sounds like someone else is in even more dire straits than you are, which is saying a lot. 

The squirrels have long since scattered, run off not by the scary noises coming from your famished stomach, but a pack of dogs. Somehow, a man has climbed several feet into the tree next to the trash can, and now perched precariously in its branches. Below him, curious dogs tilt their heads and give cautious barks. 

“Aw, hello there, cuties,” you coo, rubbing behind their ears. They yip at you enthusiastically. One sets to chasing his own tail around the tree. They seem friendly enough, but you suppose one can’t help their phobias. A little regretfully, you chase them off. 

“Go on now,” you tell the last one, leading him away. He whines, but does as you say. What a good boy. 

“Thank you,” says the stranger stranded in the tree. He slides down the trunk, face slowly regaining color. “I owe you my life.” 

“It was nothing!” You smile, but he won’t let you brush off your good deed. 

“You’re a good kid,” he nods approvingly. “Gotta reward that. Is there anything you want?” 

A home. 

Not just the house you shared with your father, but somewhere warm to return to. A person who waits to see you safely inside the threshold. 

But you know a stranger can’t give you that, so you shake your head and smile. “Really, it was nothing. You don’t owe me anything.” 

As if he had heard your inner monologue, the stranger raises an eyebrow. “A home, hm? I might be able to help with that.” 

Before you can react, he leans in and kisses your forehead. Where his lips touched your skin feels faintly warm and tingly, almost like the sensation of your leg going numb, before you recoil from him in shock. 

He presses a map into your hand and tells you, “Go to this address. Tell them Yaga sent you, and you’ll be welcomed with open arms.” 

With that, he runs off. 

What a strange man. 

Well, you’ve had a strange life, taking care of your hopeless father and all. Perhaps these things really did happen. It wasn’t so impossible for strangers to appear out of nowhere and reward you for good deeds. Maybe all the fairytales your father had read to you back when he hadn’t been so terrible were true. 

Or maybe that was the wishful thinking of an optimistically delusional girl who needed somewhere to stay desperately.

The address is located on the outskirts of town. Pushing deeper into foliage and closer to forest than civilization, you find the location you had been sent to. 

It’s a shrine. 

A run-down shrine, of all places. 

Are you on a comedy show? Should you start checking for cameras? 

Against your will, you feel your eyes grow hot. That was a cruel trick to play. He had gotten your hopes up for nothing. 

It’s not just your eyes. Your entire body starts to feel warm. The world around you erupts into blue flame. Heat licks at your shins as you scramble towards safety, closer to the center of the circle that has formed around you. 

When the flames suddenly leap, as if they’ll consume the entire sky, you scream and drop to your knees, covering your head like it’s a bomb threat. Two childish voices ring in your head, as clear and crisp as bells. 

Welcome home, Yaga-sama. 

It’s a shrine. There’s only one logical conclusion. 

This is a haunting. 

There’s only one safe path out of the ring of fire, and it’s towards the building you’ve now concluded is the site of paranormal activity. Between being actively burned alive or facing spirits though, you know which one you’ll choose. 

Your frantic fingers fumble over the latch on the shrine’s red doors as the fire inches closer and closer until you can feel its heat on your back. Finally, you throw open the doors and all but launch yourself inside. The heat recedes, but the voices do not. 

“Back already, Yaga?” A male voice drawls. “I thought your pilgrimage would’ve taken longer. After leaving me to maintain the shrine by myself for sixty years -“

You shriek as an enormous, clawed hand comes down towards your face. Your eyes squeeze shut, waiting for the end. 

“I’m not Yaga,” you wail, hoping it will save you. 

“You have a lot of nerve?” The voice finishes, more uncertainly than before. When you deem it safe to open your eyes once more, what stands before is a young man dressed in all white. White hair and blue eyes make for a staring constraint, but his coloring isn’t what’s strange about him. 

It’s his clawed hands and the equally white fox tail behind him. 

“Megumi, Tsumiki,” he says authoritatively. “This isn’t Yaga.” 

A shining ball of fire comes forward, speaking in the little girl’s voice you heard earlier. “That can’t be right! Look, she has the mark of the god on her forehead.” 

You touch your forehead, remembering the warm tingly sensation you had felt when that man kissed you. Feeling slightly delirious, you start to laugh, only to grow alarmed when you find you can’t stop. You’re growing out of breath from your near hysterical laughing, tears streaming out of the corners of your eyes. 

“Oh, great,” says the fox spirit. “She’s crazy.” 

“She’s the one with the mark,” the other ball of fire, Megumi, says. “That means she’s the god whether you like it or not, Gojo.” 

Tsumiki darts over to you, but halfway through her journey, she goes from fire to a little child just under 2 feet tall. She’s wearing a mask and plain blue yukata. 

“We have to celebrate!” She claps her hands together in excitement. “Our god has finally returned!”

Gojo looks dismissively down on you. Your laughing fit is finally starting to die down, but he doesn’t seem impressed regardless. “What god? I won’t accept a little human girl as my master. She couldn’t handle the strength of a familiar like me.”  

His condescension only makes you giggle harder. You can’t help it. Something about the fluffy fox ears protruding out of his head makes it hard to take him seriously. 

“What strength?” You laugh in his face. “This shrine is so dilapidated, I doubt you’re anything special.” 

Gojo looks away. “If she stays, I’m leaving. I won’t serve this kind of pathetic god.”

He disappears in a cloud of white smoke before Tsumiki can finish saying, “Don’t be like that!”

The will-o-wisp children introduce themselves to you as shrine spirits who look after the building. It takes a while, but by the time they kindly show you to the room where you’ll be staying, you can distinguish Tsumiki from Megumi by the differences in the masks they never take off. 

Your room is simple and threadbare. The walls are paneled bamboo and the only furnishing is an old futon. Still, you’re grateful. It’s leagues better than sleeping in the woods, which is what you started this day fearing you would have to resort to. You’ve never been the type to complain, and you won’t start now, no matter how strange your life has gotten. 

Fox spirits and will-o-wisp children don’t exist. They’re the stuff of myths. Maybe you’re just seeing things because you’re tired, you muse as you drift off to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning after a nice, long rest. The events of today will feel so far away, and you’ll be able to start over. 

Or maybe you’re dead already, and you’re wandering in the Netherworld. Perhaps the reason you can see spirits is because you’re currently residing in their land. Your entire body seizes up as you jolt yourself back to wakefulness. 

“Kamisama,” Tsumiki has crept back into your room. “Are you alright?” 

You tell her to call you by her name. Calling you god just doesn’t feel right. 

Gently, she nestles down by your pillow and puts her cold little hands on your forehead. Rather than shocking to your senses, it feels pleasant. When you were a little girl and got sick, your father used to let you stay home from school. He’d pack a towel with ice cubes and place it on your overheated forehead, staying up with you all night just to chat. It’s a good memory. 

“It’ll be alright,” Tsumiki tells you in her gentle voice. “You’ll see.” 

For spirits that supposedly take care of the shrine, you have a suspicion that Tsumiki and Megumi are pushing their work onto you when they brief you on your chores the next morning. It turns out godhood is a lot less summoning storms and a lot more doing yard work. 

Tsumiki insists that keeping the shrine pure is important for keeping evil spirits away. For some reason, that means cleaning. When you ask about calling lightning or summoning lions, Megumi laughs at you. 

“That’s Getou-sama’s job,” he says. “Your specialty is marriage. Yaga was very good at tying peoples’ fates together. You will be, too.”

He has more faith than you do in that regard. When it comes to chores, however, you’re more certain of your abilities. Busy work keeps the absurdity of your situation from sinking in, and you’re good at running the household from years of dealing with your father. You’re grateful for something to do. If you think about the past day too hard, you might break down into shocked laughter and never get back up. 

Besides, even if you don’t feel particularly ready to be a god, Tsumiki and Megumi are letting you stay in the shrine. You have to earn your keep. Soon, you settle into the process of cleaning, letting the methodical, rhythmic nature of your movements erase any doubts in your mind. You think of nothing but the cooling sensation of the water when you dip your rag into the bucket and the clean, woody scent of the shrine as you scrub the wood. 

“Ooh,” Tsumiki says approvingly when she appears. “It looks better already! Can you do the lawn next?” 

Plucking weeds is notably less soothing than cleaning. With no gloves, you’re careful to avoid hurting yourself as you tug on spiky vines and knotted twigs, but it’s no use. Eventually, you lose focus and a sharp sting graces your finger. Blood drips down your hand. You hiss in pain. 

A hand with white claws instead of nails grabs your wrist. You yelp in shock as Gojo brings your finger to his mouth and laps at the blood. It stains his lips slightly red. He worries at the cut with his tongue, making your wound ache. You try to pull back, but he holds on. 

To your amazement, the cut closes before your eyes. You’re just about to thank him when he ruins the moment. 

“You really are useless,” he says. “You can’t even pluck grass?”

You yank your hand out of his grip as hard as you can, sending yourself tumbling back against the grass. You hate how it must make yourself seem even more human in his eyes, a weak, fragile thing. 

“Give up,” he says, and it’s almost gentle, the way his claws graze your chin as he holds your face in one hand. “You’re not suited to be a god.” 

You turn away, unwilling to let him see any more of your vulnerability. “You don’t know anything about me.” 

“Suit yourself,” he says with a noise of annoyance. “Brats who run away from home aren’t my problem.” 

“I didn’t run away!” You snap, whirling on him. “My dad was the one who ran! I don’t have anywhere else to go!” 

But he’s gone.

At least Megumi and Tsumiki are nice to you. Megumi takes the bucket of weeds you deposit at the front door and whisks it somewhere out of your sight, while Tsumiki prepares a nice, hot bath for you. Exhausted, you collapse onto the bamboo floor spread eagle. 

God, a voice murmurs in your head.

Not again. You don’t want any more spirits to deal with. When you raise your head, instead of another yokai, there’s an old woman standing in front of the shrine. Her head is bowed and her hands are clasped in prayer. 

Please bless my daughter’s marriage so that she will enjoy a long and fruitful life with her partner. 

Her voice is coming from some place inside your head. It resonates like a bell, ringing crisp and clear. You stretch out your hands wonderingly. You don’t look any different. 

“You see?” Tsumiki says approvingly. “You’re a god.”’ 

But you don’t feel like one. You feel just like a normal person. 

“A god needs a familiar.” You can’t see Megumi’s face behind his mask as he speaks, but you can imagine the solemn little boy he must be. “You need to bind Gojo to you.”

“How do I do that?” 

“You have to kiss him.” 

You wait for them to tell you they’re joking. 

“What? I can’t kiss him! Is there-” 

Megumi cuts in. “It’s just the traditional way to seal the contract. Don’t think too much of it.” 

The fact that neither of them are bothered makes you feel like the ridiculous one for being off put by this, but you’re sure you’re not. Still, if you’re a god now, you have to put all of your mortal sensibilities aside. It’s like another culture, you tell yourself. Like how Europeans kiss each other on the cheek to say hello. Even if you can’t convince yourself, Megumi and Tsumiki are insistent. 

You were so fired up just a second ago, but now your head is filled with doubts. If such a simple matter can sway you, are you really meant to be a god after all? Maybe Gojo is right. Maybe you should just leave. 

“Please,” Tsumiki says. She looks distraught. “Don’t abandon us. Please don’t leave.” 

Megumi doesn’t say anything, but his silence is enough. 

“Okay,” you say, feeling defeated. “I’ll give it a shot.” 

You’ve always been good at chores. If taming Gojo is just another part of your new job, it sounds like it's time to get serious. 

“Take me to him.” 

Megumi and Tsumiki balk. 

“Right now?”

“Why not? The sooner I get it over with, the better, right?”

“He’s...indisposed at the moment,” Tsumiki says carefully. 

“Indisposed? Is he sick?” 

“Not quite,” Megumi says. He’s very expressive for a spirit. You can practically imagine him grimacing. 

“Then it’s fine!” 

You would soon come to regret your words. 

Megumi and Tsumiki lead you out of the shrine. They show you where to find the path that can lead you to the land of spirits and demons. Your entire body rebels at the feeling of being in this other world, but at the same time, you feel at home here. The god and the girl that coexist inside of you are mutually repelled by and attracted to this place. 

Even though you know Megumi and Tsumiki aren’t really children, or at least children in the way mortals think of them, you’re still concerned about letting them traipse around this dangerous place. However, they seem more used to this world than you are. That energy is better devoted to fending for yourself. 

They lead you under bridges where the running water smells like flowers and women’s voices hiss in the babble of the current. Tree leaves rustle with hands that disappear into darkness. You follow them through dark alleyways lined with red paper blessings, and doorsteps encircled with salt. Eyes follow you, leaving your skin crawling. 

You’re so focused on keeping your head down and staying out of danger that you almost don’t notice when they stop. You nearly run Megumi over. 

“He’s inside here,” Tsumiki says. 

Is it just you, or does she seem nervous? 

The lanterns inside this establishment are turned down to a dimness that barely illuminates the corridors. Sweet smelling smoke writhes around your feet from some unknown source as you head deeper and deeper into the maze of hallways, following the pair of shrine spirits. You pass women wearing fox masks, dressed in luxurious kimonos. Their hair towers over their head in elaborate updos, held in place with beautiful pins inlaid with chartreuse and gold. 

Megumi stops before a folding screen door. Like all things within this building, it’s beautiful. The silk screen is painted with images of flowers and more gruesome scenes as well, but somehow, it’s still breath-taking. A little like Gojo, in that regard. 

You hear the voices of women behind the screen, flattering Gojo. The light of a single candle illuminates the dim room, imprinting his silhouette against it, as well as that of the two women with him. They’re draped over him, hands roaming his body as they purr their compliments. Your face burns with embarrassment. 

“What are you doing?” Megumi demands of Gojo. “How can you parade around the red-light district like this? You’re the familiar of a god, not some common demon! If Yaga knew, it’d break his poor heart.” 

Behind the screen, Gojo merely brushes him off. “Yaga’s been replaced by some little human worm. Why should I care what he thinks now?”

“What about the shrine? Don’t you care about that, at least?” Tsumiki's voice is thick with reproach. 

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I do,” he says. “Ha! You know what? Maybe I should thank that girl. Now that I’m free, I can do whatever I want.” 

“Gojo-“ 

“I’ll can indulge in every little vice Yaga never allowed me to touch before. Who would want to be a familiar when I can have all of this?” 

“Gojo, our god is here.” 

“What?” 

He leaps up and pushes the screen aside, coming face to face with you. He looks startled to see you, though you don’t see why he should care, since he so desires to lead a life of sin. 

You look upon him with disgust. You might want a familiar, but you’re not so desperate you’d stoop as low as this. Gojo cares so little for anyone but himself. If you’re going to be a god, you’re going to do it right. You’ll pick a good familiar, one who will genuinely love the shrine as much as it deserves. 

You turn and leave as he, half-clothed, frantically starts pulling on the outer layers of his kimono. 

“Wait,” he calls after you. “Tsumiki! Megumi! Why would you bring her here?”

“She wanted to see you,” Megumi retorts. 

“This isn’t the place for a human,” he says. “She’s going to get eaten!” 

The faster Gojo follows you, the faster you run from him. By the time you’re out of what you’ve come to realize is a brothel, you’re sprinting. Your legs carry you right into someone else as your face slams against a broad, muscled chest. 

“Oh,” says a voice above your head. “How pretty.” 

A hand caresses your face. This spirit has tattoo marks across his face and body. More interestingly, he has multiple arms. 

You’re frozen in place by fear as he brings his mouth closer and closer to your face. He’s close enough to kiss, but this is a spirit, which means he’s more likely to eat you. 

“Be good for me now,” he purrs in your ear. “Fear makes flesh all the sweeter.” 

Three of his six arms are consumed by fire. He pushes you away from him in favor of batting out the flame. 

Gojo pulls you towards him, hiding you in the folds of his billowing kimono. You press your face against his shoulder, swallowing back the tears of fear from nearly being eaten. Somehow, he feels safe, even though he’s been nothing but antagonistic towards you. He feels almost protective as he shields your body with his, securing you under one arm. 

“Scram,” he tells the other demon. “She’s mine, Sukuna.” 

Sukuna rolls his pairs of eyes. “You weren’t with her when I caught her. She’s fair game.” 

Fox fire flickers in Gojo’s hand. His white talons seem to elongate before your eyes. 

“If you want to fight over her, then by all means,” he says with a dangerous smile. “But we both know I’d win.” 

“Maybe later then,” Sukuna says, lazily as if Gojo isn’t threatening him. “Once I’ve eaten my fill.” 

He stalks off into the night in search of more prey. 

“This is why I told you to wait,” Gojo says, running his hand over his face. “You’re practically bait in this world. Come on, I’ll take you home.” 

You nod, not trusting your voice, but he catches on anyways. 

“Don’t cry,” he says, his face twisted in a grimace. “I won’t know what to do if you cry. Look, this is just your life now, okay? You’ll have to get used to it.” 

On impulse, you press your face into his shoulder again, still sniffling. You want to be comforted, even though you know he won’t give it to you. 

“Ugh,” he says, true to form. “Quit that.” 

By the time you’ve calmed down, Gojo has already escorted you back to the shrine. 

“Don’t come back,” he tells you. 

Of course, you can’t listen to him. On your second night in the land of the dead and monsters, not only do you have to hide from beasts who would devour you the moment they found out what you were, you also have to hide from Gojo. You’re wearing a disguise, courtesy of Tsumiki and Megumi. 

In your defense, it’s not like you want to be here. You need a familiar, and it’s clearly not going to be Gojo. 

According to Tsumiki, Gojo’s the strongest, but there are other familiars who would be willing to serve you. They’re all in the Netherworld, however, and you have to find them before you can contract them. 

You pull the curtain of the hat shielding your face a little closer around you as you peer at the faces surrounding you, trying to gauge who looks friendly. None of them do. You’ve been wandering around for hours, but not a single spirit has stood out to you. 

In the end, you don’t find him. He finds you. 

“A human god?” A hand grasps your wrist loosely. “That’s rare. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be here?” 

The man in front of you looks normal by any standards - but you know better than to trust your gut in the netherworld. Still, he’s the closest thing to a human you’ve seen in a while. Surrounded by a maelstrom of monsters, he feels like the eye of the storm. There’s a quiet and a calm surrounding him, even as you walk among noderabo with withered, leathery skin and scaly yajo. 

It’s not like he’s in his own little pocket of the world, you realize. He is. Everyone is purposefully giving him a wide berth. 

“Who are you?”  

“I asked first,” he says. 

“You know who I am! You just said so - I’m the human god.” 

His eyes rake over you. “So you are. But what are you doing here, girl?” 

You throw his words back in his face obstinately. “You first.”

“I’m Toji.” That doesn’t tell you anything, but he’s clearly unwilling to divulge more. “Your turn.”

“I’m looking for a familiar.” 

“What about your familiar? I heard that Gojo-sama isn’t keen on sharing.” 

Somehow, the way he says Gojo-sama sounds derisive, even with the respectful honorific. 

“He doesn’t want to be my familiar.” 

The rejection stings coming out of your own mouth. 

“Sounds like him. Haughty bastard, he couldn’t stand to serve a human girl, could he?” 

“Yeah! He’s an asshole,” you say, feeling validated. 

When Toji laughs, the scar over his lip tugs one side of his mouth down. You kind of like it. And he must be strong, just looking at him. He’s well muscled and covered in scars. Of course, there’s the little matter of the reverence everyone around you is offering him. Tsumiki and Megumi had told you to just go out and find one. Could it be that easy?

“Are you interested?” 

He gives you a look of barely concealed amusement. “You’re funny, girl. I don’t think Gojo would like that very much, though.” 

“I don’t care what Gojo thinks.” 

“Oh, here he comes now. Don’t go running too far - you’ll worry him,” he says, slow and easy. His confidence is absurd - it reminds you of Gojo, actually. He must be strong. “If you’re really serious about wanting me as a familiar, why don’t you meet me here again in three days?”

“What are you doing?” Gojo snarls at you. His teeth match the rest of his fox physique. With wonder, you realize that his pearly canines are pointed beyond what’s normal. “I told you not to come back!” 

“But- He-” You turn around to point Toji out, but he’s gone. 

“Who?” Gojo says. 

“He was right there!” 

“You’re so annoying,” Gojo bites out. “I don’t care what happens to you, but if you die, Megumi and Tsumiki will cry, so stop wandering off on your own. You’re lucky you didn’t get devoured on the spot.” 

He’s starting to get really irritating. You shove his hands off. 

“You know it’s actually your fault I’m here, right? If you didn’t reject me, I wouldn’t have to scour the Netherworld for a familiar.” 

Gojo scoffs. “My fault? Maybe you should take a look at yourself. If you were less weak, I wouldn’t have a problem serving you!” 

“That’s- You’re impossible!” You splutter. “I can’t help being weak! I was born this way! Not everyone is so lucky to be born a kitsune, oh-so-great-Gojo-sama.” 

“Enough,” he sighs. Taking you by your wrist, he forcibly drags you through the streets back in the direction you came. 

“Ow! You’re hurting me!” 

“Gojo!” Megumi’s reproving voice breaks the argument up before it can begin again. 

He lets go of you almost guiltily, if you thought he could feel guilt. 

“I’ll take her home,” Megumi says. 

Gojo’s tail lashes behind him angrily, but Megumi doesn’t spare him a second glance as he ushers you away. 

“Thank you,” you tell him in relief. “What are you doing here?” 

“You were taking a long time,” he says. “Tsumiki and I were getting worried. Did you find anyone?” 

You think of Toji. “No,” you say. “No one.” 

The next day, while Megumi and Tsumiki dress you for your trip through the Netherworld again, Megumi presses three slips of white paper into your hands. 

“We should’ve taught you this sooner,” he says. “One of the powers of a god is to transform objects. Whatever you write on this charm will become true - within the scope of your power. Be safe.”  

Armed with your paper slips, you feel like a real god. Tsumiki pushes you out the door with a prayer for good luck, though you’re not sure you can grant prayers to yourself for yourself.

Outside the door, something whines by your feet.

“Gojo?” 

Or is that a regular white fox? 

It snaps its teeth at you. 

Definitely Gojo.

“I don’t need an escort,” you tell him, making shooing motions at him with your hands. “Go away!” 

He rolls over and yips at you, his tail wagging. 

“I can’t understand you like this!” 

“I said,” a cloud of smoke reveals him, mostly humanoid once again, except for his ears and tail. “I don’t want to do this either. It’s for Megumi and Tsumiki.” 

Toji doesn’t seem to like him, so you don’t want to risk bringing him with you. Despite your best attempts to shake him, Gojo follows you as you retrace your steps back into the spirit world. You’re just starting to despair when you spot a bigger reason to be upset. 

“Hello, delicious,” Sukuna says. “Ready for round two?” 

Why does he look even more terrifying? Did he get bigger? 

“Leave her alone,” Gojo says, almost bored. “It’s pathetic. You can only bully things weaker than you, huh?” 

“I’m not afraid to fight you,” Sukuna tells him. 

You’re panicking. They both look serious. You don’t want to be caught between these two forces of nature. 

“You should be,” Gojo says, and steps in front of you. Over his shoulder, he tells you, “Run. You’re in my way.” 

This is the chance you were waiting for. 

Toji’s dressed differently when you find him again. Last night, he was wearing a casual black kimono. Tonight, he’s dressed in a tight fitting black shirt and loose white pants. 

“You look nice,” you tell him, feeling anxious. Your mind keeps going back to Gojo. You’re sure he can hold his own, but you’re still worried for him. As you are, however, you’re of no help to him. The only way you’d be able to rescue him if he actually was in danger is by making a contract with a powerful familiar. 

“It’s for work,” he says. “Follow me.” 

“We can’t do it here?” 

“Do you want to kiss me in front of everyone?” He shrugs and reaches for you. “I mean, I’m down if you are, but I figured-” 

“No,” you squeak and dart away. “Privacy is good!” 

He laughs. “You’re as funny as ever, huh? C’mere.” 

Toji leads you off the beaten path and further into the woods. The only thing that keeps you from feeling more nervous is the moon shining overhead, illuminating your path. It feels almost like a friend is with you.

“Here is good,” Toji says, stopping at a clearing. 

“It’s so pretty,” you breathe out, dazzled. This deep into the woods, fireflies are lighting your way. Beneath your feet, a springy bed of flowers and moss covers the floor. 

“What can I say? I’m a romantic.” 

“Yeah, right,” you laugh at him, but you draw closer. You think you could trust him. You think you could be partners with him. 

Then Toji grabs you by the shoulders and dangles you off the edge of the clearing, over a steep drop you hadn’t noticed. The sharp cut off had been hidden by flowers, danger painted over with beauty. 

“Sorry, kid,” Toji says. “No hard feelings, right?” 

“Why?” You whisper. Gojo had been right. 

“There’s a bounty on your head,” he says. “Getou has offered to grant the wish of anyone who kills you.”

His eyes turn wistful. “I have a kid. Haven’t seen him in years. You understand, right? It’s not personal.” 

The fall is brutal. The wind whips tears into your eyes, if you weren’t already crying from the fear of falling to your death. You have to do something, anything. Above your head, something white flutters. 

A dove? 

Then another. 

It’s one of the paper ofuda Megumi had given you before you left, caught in the updraft of you rushing down to earth. You snatch it out of the air. You can’t reach the pen in your pocket. With increasing desperation, you bite down on your finger hard enough to draw blood and trace the characters for a tree branch onto it. Holding it aloft, you pray. 

Between your hands, wood solidifies. You’re clinging to a scrap of a twig sprouting from the rocky cliffside. Megumi’s words echo in your head - only within the scope of your power. 

So this is it, huh?

That’s all there is of your godly strength. 

“Looks like you’re in trouble,” Gojo says. He has no problem balancing on the sheer cliff. His appearance is impeccable, completely unscathed from his fight with Sukuna. He perches like a bird, as comfortable as if he were standing on solid ground. “Do you need help?”

Thank god. He’s here to save you! You nod, turning teary eyes on him. You were wrong about him. Gojo really is a good guy, deep down. 

“If you say, ‘Please save me, Gojo-sama, I was stupid.’ I’ll help you. Throw in some crying and begging, too.” 

Your eyes dry up instantly. He’s a total bastard. You clutch onto the branch tighter. There’s no way you’ll give him the satisfaction of groveling for help. 

Your resolve weakens when you hear the first snap. 

“Time’s ticking,” Gojo calls in a sing-song voice. “What will it be?” 

The harder you hold on, the more your flimsy branch breaks. 

“Come on,” Gojo says. “It’s not that hard. It’s just seven little words. Isn’t that worth your life?”

“Go fuck yourself,” you tell him, and the branch finally snaps. 

Falling for the second time is just as bad as the first time. The icy wind snatches at you like claws, tearing at your clothes. 

To your surprise, Gojo leaps after you. He makes free-fall look elegant - surely a far cry from whatever you’re doing. 

“Just say it,” he yells, within arm’s reach. He’s so close he could snag you by the shirt and haul you to safety, but you know he won’t. Not without getting what he wants. “Would you rather die than just apologize?” 

You have an answer prepared. 

His eyes widen in shock when you press your palms to his cheek, pull him closer, and kiss him. 

You barely have time to register the taste of him, sake and something sweet, before the reality of falling to your death rushes in again. 

“Gojo, save me!” 

As if his body is piloted by someone else, Gojo catches you. For him, it’s a short leap back up to the top of the clearing, where Toji has disappeared. 

You climb down from his hold once you’re certain you’re safe. You never thought you’d miss the feeling of solid ground beneath your feet this much, but at the moment, you’re willing to kiss the earth. 

Gojo seems much worse off. He’s frozen in shock, muttering the same refrain to himself under his breath. “Me? Bound to her? Impossible.” 

“Let’s go home,” you tell him. He doesn’t seem to get it until you tug him towards the path, and then he leads the way wordlessly. . 

You wake to Megumi and Tsumiki weeping over you. 

“I’m alright!”

They freeze, then burst into fresh tears. 

“We thought you would never wake up! Your first time using ofuda must have been too much for you,” Megumi gets out through his sobs. 

You feel sore all over. You can barely recall the events of the previous night, only that you kissed- 

“Finally up?” 

Gojo’s tapping his foot as he waits for you to get up. He looks furious. There’s an unmistakeable tick in his jaw that spells trouble for you. 

It’s too early to deal with him. You duck back under the covers. 

“Oh no you don’t,” he growls out as he seizes your wrist and bodily hauls you out of your warm cocoon of blankets. “You wanted to be a god, you’re going to be a god. It’s time for some training.” 

You shiver pathetically in the cold morning air. If you had known helping a stranger would lead to be harassed by a fox spirit, you would’ve never done it in the first place. 

“Try harder,” Gojo says at your sixth failed attempt to turn water into wine. 

“It smells alcoholic,” Megumi offers loyally. 

“I am trying!” You insist. 

“Harder,” Gojo snarls. 

The seventh attempt doesn’t change. Gojo throws up his arms and stalks out of the shrine, declaring the need to cool his head. Tsumiki frantically trails him, not trusting him to not attempt to run away again. 

Megumi tries to assure you that you’re doing well, but honestly, you need to leave too. The shrine feels too stuffy. A change of scenery will do you good. Sitting alone in the woods just behind the shrine, you try to focus. Slowly, stacks of ofuda disappear from your hands as you paste them to trees, willing them to blossom. Wilt. Do anything, anything at all. 

You’re out cold when Gojo finds you. 

“Divine power takes time,” he says as he prepares dinner. “Use too many talismans at once and you’ll pass out.” 

You drink a spoonful of soup morosely. “How do I get stronger?” 

“You’ll get stronger if you grant prayers.” 

Tsumiki perks up. “One just came in!” 

“I already looked at it,” Gojo says dismissively. “Not that one.” 

“Everyone’s wishes deserve to be looked at,” you argue. 

Gojo scoffs, “Not this one.” 

“Don’t be rude! A god can’t pick and choose.” 

He tosses the prayer at you. 

Morimoto Rika’s request touches your heart. She’s the spirit of a nearby lake - not just any spirit, as Megumi helpfully clarifies, but another owner of a shrine. A human boy visits her waters nightly. By the light of the moonlight, she fell in love with him, but she can’t meet him because they live in two separate worlds. 

And to think that you would’ve never known to help her if Gojo had continued keeping this from you. 

“This sounds like the perfect job for me,” you argue. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Yokai can’t fall in love with humans.” 

You narrow your eyes at him. “Aren’t you bound to do as I say? Take me to her.” 

Against his will, Gojo summons what’s called a ‘night fog coach’. Only operable at night, as the name suggests, it’s a tall black carriage truly made for a god. You’re just wondering how Gojo expects you to climb aboard when he effortlessly lifts you by the waist. 

“You’re the one who wanted to go meet her,” he sneers. “Chop-chop.” 

Your supplicant looks like a fish if it were a girl. She has pale green skin and large, black eyes, with overly large teeth for her mouth. Black hair frames a heart shaped face. She’s cute, in her own monstrous way. And she’s desperately in love with a human boy. 

Gojo helps you transform her into a human body and make her over into a normal teenage girl. For a prayer granted, it feels like nothing more than dressing your friend up for a date. 

You’re even as nosy as you would be in that situation. It’s the first prayer you’ve ever granted. You know you shouldn’t, but you and Gojo watch the burgeoning romance from a distance. Of course, he’s completely disapproving, but you have high hopes for them - until Rika pulls out a ring. 

Aren’t they moving a little too fast? 

It only gets worse when Rika confesses that she’s been stalking him - sort of. Keeping tabs on him for his safety by following him around town is a little too close to the other, for your liking. Your head drops into your hands. 

But Yuta takes it surprisingly well. A little too well, in fact. It only seems to infatuate him even more. You knew there were certain types of men out there who loved crazy, but you had never seen it in real life - until now. 

Could this even be counted as a success? 

You’re happy for Rika and Yuta, as happy as you can be for their twisted little union, but you’re just waiting for Gojo to bite your head off for bringing a (real) monster and a human together as soon as you get back home. At least they’re happy, you think ruefully. Worse things could happen. Your first union as a marriage god didn’t fail. In fact, of all people, Yuta seemed the most likely in the world to accept Rika as she was, human or not. 

To your surprise, returning to the shrine, Gojo begrudgingly says, “You did well.” 

Any warm feelings you have for him the next day are replaced when he barges into your room and demands you strip. 

“You have guests,” he says. “Messengers from Toji-sama, the god of the wind.” 

Your eyes grow wide. You hadn’t known Toji was a god. Come to think of it, did Gojo even know the reason why you had been falling from that cliff? You weren’t sure if he had come in time to see who had pushed you. 

“What are you worried about? I’ll be at your side the whole time.” 

You’ll tell him later. Right now, you have a serious matter to prepare for. 

You tried not to discriminate on the basis of his master, but it’s not that at all. Toji’s familiar, Naoya, is simply annoying on his own terms. 

“So you’re the new god of this ramshackle little shrine,” he sniffs. “God, it’s disgusting. How poor are you?” 

“You must be the thirteenth familiar Toji’s owned. He goes through you like toys, doesn’t he? Of course you wouldn’t know that he used to live in worse conditions before. Deplorable.” Gojo laughs in his face. 

Naoya grits his teeth. “I’m surprised your little human dared to show her face. I thought she’d be terrified after what Toji did to her. They’re such weak little things.” 

Gojo looks at the other demon with a calm that worries you. As human as he is, there are moments when you can catch the monster lurking within. He’s like the sea, deceptively calm until you remember the threat of an unseen riptide. 

“If you insult my master again,” he says carefully, enunciating every word like he’s stabbing at them with a knife, “I will take your head and deliver it to your master as a present.” 

“Don’t tell me you’re happy to be serving a mortal girl,” Naoya laughs. “Not someone like you, Satoru. How the mighty have fallen.” 

Gojo looks at him for a long moment, then he ignores him completely and walks to your side. The most painful part of Naoya’s digs at you is knowing he’s right. Gojo doesn’t like this. How could he? He went from being the strongest to being commanded by some powerless girl. Still, Gojo gazes at you with his inscrutable eyes. You can’t read him at all. 

Slowly, he sinks to his knees next to you. 

With a gentleness you can hardly bear, he lays his head in your lap, as gentle and docile as a puppy. His neck is bared as if for an executioner’s axe, the delicate pulse of his heart open to you. He closes his eyes. His breath is shallow. He stays there, and says no more. 

“Oh, Satoru,” Naoya says in delight. “You really have become a tamed thing.” 

With an uncertainty you’re trying to hide, you lift your hands to Gojo’s head. His hair is sinfully soft. You’re almost scared he’ll try to take your hands off for it, but when you start to gently pet his hair, he almost purrs. His eyes close, half-lidded in pleasure. 

“I serve who I want to serve,” Gojo says. His tail lashes behind him. “Who are you to tell me my master is unworthy?” 

Naoya shrugs, clearly disbelieving. “Sure, Satoru. Keep telling yourself that. I’m just here to deliver a gift.” 

He tosses you a package wrapped carefully in beautiful, ornate wrapping paper. You’re sure it’s not Toji’s doing. He’s not the type. 

As soon as he leaves, Gojo pushes himself away from you. It leaves you a little sorrowful, the speed with which he tries to get away. He only did it for your sake, you know. He wanted to protect your honor in front of Naoya because you’re his master. But it must have disgusted him, to get on his knees for a human, if he recoiled so fast. 

“What did he mean, what Toji did to you?” Gojo asks over dinner. 

You know instantly that you’ll only draw his ire if you try to play dumb. 

“Toji pushed me off that cliff the day you found me.” 

Gojo’s eyes darken. The next time Naoya returns, he promises you, he’d set his tail on fire. No one besmirches his master’s honor like that. 

It’s about honor, of course. You’d be a fool to think otherwise. 

Alone in your chambers, you unwrap the package Naoya gave you. It’s an incense burner, beautiful and silver. As apology presents go, it’s a decent one. You set it aside for use at a later time. 

Naoya’s visit only makes Gojo’s training worse, but these days, you’ve grown used to him and his harsh words. The more that he yells at you for being weak, the more you can brush it off as Gojo just being Gojo. That only irritates him more, of course. 

But nothing pisses him off as much as you claiming that you’re returning to school. Gojo thinks that you have no need for school as a god. There’s nothing the humans can teach you that he can’t. 

In your eyes, Gojo is a kitsune. That means he’ll never understand a teenage girl’s heart. School isn’t about learning, it’s about the experience! You’ll never be in high school again - there are so many things you still haven’t experienced, like school trips. You only have one youth - you have to seize it in the moment! 

Gojo isn’t convinced. 

Like an overbearing parent, he nags you all day and night until finally, you strike a deal. He’ll let you go to school, but only as long as you cover up the god-mark on your head. Gojo is never one to make things easy for you. The hat he bestows you with is an ugly grandma print with faux fox ears. You’ll be the laughingstock of the school!

“It’s dangerous,” he says. “Who knows what wild beasts will be lurking about?” 

“You’re the wild beast,” you say. “I can’t wear that!” 

“I guess you can’t go to school then,” he sighs. “What a pity.” 

It’s all for show, of course. You know what he’s really like. There’s no use in arguing - either you agree to his compromise or you stay here, stuck in the temple for the rest of your life. You’ll miss out on all the joys of youth, never growing old in your cloistered shrine. The thought is unbearable. 

You snatch the hat from him in indignation. Putting it on before you leave the next day makes you cringe, but as long as you avoid mirrors, you can almost forget that it’s there - if not for your classmates staring at you. You can feel their judging eyes everywhere you go, and the whispers. 

You can’t even say you don’t care - you do care. You only have one high school life, and Gojo is ruining it. During lunch, you escape into the bathroom to mope and avoid all of your classmates. 

“Are you getting bullied?” Gojo’s voice is too bright and cheery for your dark mood right now. You can’t promise to remain calm if he stays here. 

“This is the girl’s bathroom, Gojo.” 

“Don’t be like that. I’m just worried about my master,” he says. “Well? How is it? Do you want to go home now?” 

He’s lying. You know he’s not worried about you at all, but you should be used to it. You don’t know why it stings as much as it does. 

You’re hurt even though you know this is just how Gojo is. Of course he’d be happy to see you miserable - he hadn’t even wanted you for a god in the first place. He’s bound to you by obligation, and nothing more. You had known from the start that he didn’t care about you, so why does it hurt that he won’t comfort you? It’s just like those nights in the demon world that seem so long ago now. He hasn’t changed at all. 

Gojo isn’t as shocked by your outburst as he is by the tears slowly welling up in your eyes. He stands stunned as you rush out of him and back into the hallway. 

Tsumiki appears next to him out of thin air, completely unimpressed. 

“You did a terrible job on that one, Gojo.” 

As if in a daze, he lifts his hand, where the crystal of one teardrop shines. He’d tried to reach for you at the last moment, but you were already gone. “I made her cry...” 

Megumi appears next to Tsumiki, his face red. “What’s taking so long? Hurry up and leave! We’re in the girl’s bathroom!” 

“Gojo was bullying our master,” Tsumiki announces. 

“I wasn’t bullying her!” 

“He made her cry.” 

Gojo winces. “Okay, yeah. I did do that.”

Megumi kicks him in the leg, which amounts to almost nothing. “Take responsibility, then!” 

When you return home, Gojo is waiting by the shrine door with an almost offensively polite smile on his face. “Let me take your coat, master.” 

Him being kind gives you the creeps. You can’t help but feel like he’s planning something, especially when he shows you the lavish dinner he prepared for you with all of your favorites. 

“What’s with the look?” He says, annoyed at your accusing eyes peering at him over your bowl. “I do something nice for you and this is how you treat me?” 

“This is really just for me? No ulterior motives?” 

“None,” he promises. 

The smile that breaks over your face is like the sun through rain clouds - sudden, dramatic, and almost painfully bright after a period of gray skies. 

“Thanks, Gojo!” 

The look in his eyes is unreadable as he reaches to spoon more food onto your plate. 

You don’t have anyone else in this world. Besides the shrine spirits, Gojo might be the only person in the world who will take care of you. For some reason, the thought doesn’t sting as much as it did this morning. 

The second day of school starts with pouring rain, as if it’s a direct reaction to your foul mood earlier. Gojo pulls you back when you try to leave. 

“It’s a bad omen,” he says. “Stay home with me today. I’ll worry about you if you go.” 

Normally, such sweet words might bring a blush to your face, but you can read between the lines. 

Stay home with me today so I can keep you out of trouble, you brat. 

I’ll worry about you if you go because you’re weaker than a worm. 

“Stop trying to keep me from going to school! I thought we got over this yesterday,” you huff. “I’m going to be late for the bus!” 

You leave Gojo with a handful of air as you dart under his outstretched arm and out the door. 

In school, all your classmates are listless. 

You’ve never been so unhappy to not be the subject of attention. What is wrong with everyone? Even the teacher doesn’t reprimand anyone for sleeping in class, half-asleep herself. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to be caught in this spell of drowsiness, which insinuates paranormal origins. 

As you’re sweeping the classroom after class, one of your classmates lets out a disgruntled noise. 

“It’s a snake,” she says, not at all with the intonation of someone who’s just discovered a snake. Ami’s the type to go apoplectic at the sight of a fly, much less an actual snake, so you don’t pay much mind until you hear Kurama go, “Huh, she wasn’t kidding.” 

There’s a little yellow snake in the classroom. In their stupor, none of your classmates seem to care all that much about it. They just continue going about their chores. You feel bad for it. It’s such a small, fragile little creature. In their state, they might accidentally end up crushing it. 

With gentle murmurs of encouragement, you coax it into your hand. It’s surprisingly docile and twines itself readily around your wrist before you set it outside the window to be set free. 

Gojo doesn’t praise you for your act of heroism on the behalf of his fellow yokai, as you remind him. You saved his compatriots! Where’s the gratitude? 

He calls you a stupid little girl. “I don’t care about them, I care about you!” 

Your face warms with embarrassment against your will even though you know he doesn’t mean it like that. Time and time again, Gojo has stressed that he will never see yokai and humans as even remotely on the same playing field, much less capable of being romantic partners. 

“You’re my master,” he says. There’s your call back to reality. “Look at this mark on your wrist.” 

It appears like a normal bruise to you, though you’re not sure how it could’ve happened. Your new snake friend was very gentle when he was coiled around your wrist. He must have been someone’s escaped pet. You hope he found his way back home. 

Gojo’s mad. He’s enunciating every word. 

“This is exactly why I have to keep such a close eye on you. That’s no ordinary bruise. That is an engagement mark. Care to explain to me how I left you alone for one second and you got yourself engaged to a divine beast?” 

Your face pales. “Excuse me?” 

“That snake is going to come and claim you as his bride.” 

“As a bride?” Your head spins and you have to sit down. You’re too young to get married. You look up at Gojo, teary-eyed. You don’t want this. 

“Stop making that face,” he snaps, pushing a hand over your face to hide it. “As if I would let that happen. The master of the Yaga shrine, my master, could never be wed to a mere snake.” 

If Gojo says he won’t let it happen, you can put your faith in him. You breathe a little easier. As mean as he can be, Megumi and Tsumiki weren’t lying when they called him the best familiar. He’s the strongest and most capable person or rather, yokai, that you know. There’s not a single task you set for him that he hasn’t been able to complete. 

It’s still raining when you go outside to practice your talisman making. 

You find the weather quite pleasant, even though it’s a little damp. The chill in the air cuts through the muggy feeling of summer, and the raindrops cool your cheeks. When you turn your face up to the sky, you can taste ozone in the little drops that pelt your face. 

“You’re very beautiful, kamisama,” says a voice. 

There's a man waiting just outside the red gates. A supplicant? In this weather? You better get him inside in a hurry. You dash over to him. 

“What are you doing? Come inside, you’ll get wet!” 

Just as you reach him, he lifts his face. He looks like a statue, with high cheekbones, and solemn eyes. His hair is the same pale yellow as the snake you saw earlier that day-

“Gojo!” 

But it’s too late. 

The snake has a hold on your wrist, right above the engagement mark. He takes you away. 

One moment, you’re standing in your own backyard, the next, you’re surrounded by almost-familiar bamboo walls. It looks like your shrine but for little distinguishing touches. That makes you uncomfortable. 

“This is Haibara shrine,” the snake says. “I’m Nanami, the familiar of Haibara-sama. I’ve taken you away to marry you.” 

There’s a curtain over the center of the room. Haibara presumably rests behind it, but something strikes you as off about the whole scenario. That’s not what’s foremost on your mind, however. 

“I don’t want to marry you! You kidnapped me!” 

He tilts his head at you. “I couldn’t have kidnapped you. We’re engaged, you see?” He traces the mark on your wrist with one slim finger. “We’re going to be very happy together.” 

“You’re being creepy,” you push him away. 

At your rejection, something dark crosses over his features - not danger, but pain. He has some nerve feeling upset when you’re the one who should be upset here! 

“That’s alright,” he says, trying to stroke your hair. You won’t let him touch you. “I know it can take some getting used to. Here, let me show you to your room.” 

Nanami has clearly put a lot of thought into decorating for you. It’s beautifully furnished, with rich silk sheets and the fragrant smell of plum blossoms permeating the air. Here, there’s not a single thing you could want but- 

Gojo. 

You miss Gojo and you miss your shrine. 

When Nanami leaves you in your room, it feels like a tomb in the silence. You bury your face in your expensive, hateful sheets and try to resist the urge to sob. You want Gojo to come get you. You want to go home. 

Hours pass, but Gojo doesn’t come. 

Nothing but the sound of your breathing changes, passing from frantic to deeper, slower, steadier. As your head clears, you notice the window. It’s a beautifully ornate design, a red knot of luck. The center is just big enough for a girl to squeeze through, if you try hard. 

Resolve grips you. 

You’re not going to wait for Gojo to rescue you. You’re going to get out of here yourself, find him, and scold him for not coming to get you earlier. Aren’t you his most beloved master, as he so professes? You’re going to make him kneel for at least three hours practicing his apologies! 

Filled with renewed conviction, you hoist yourself onto the window sill and begin the tedious task of shimmying yourself out. Just when you’re nearly there, the sharp edge of the metal scrapes your shin, leaving a long, thin cut. 

The smell of salt replaces the plums immediately. 

“God?” Comes Nanami’s voice. “I smell blood. Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine!” You panic. If he discovers your escape attempt now, he might try to put you in a more secure room, and then you’ll really never see Gojo again. 

The adjacent wall caves in. 

Gojo stands in the rubble, seething, each hand wreathed in blue flame. He doesn’t even notice you, his attention wholly focused on Nanami. “You drew her blood? Are you prepared to face the consequences of hurting my master, snake?” 

You grab his arm just before he attacks. “He didn’t! I hurt myself on the window- oof!” 

Gojo’s so much bigger than you are. When he folds you into his arms, his entire body surrounds you. His chin tucks itself over your head, his large arms wrap around your body. You’ve never felt more secure than you are here, now. “I thought you’d be crying.”

His voice is hoarse. 

You’ve never heard that before. 

“You came,” you whimper, burying your face into his shoulder.  

Nanami’s face is crestfallen. “Are you going to leave me?” 

You grab Gojo’s arm and duck into the other room, where Haibara’s curtain is. 

“Don’t!” Nanami cries. 

When you pull it back, there’s nothing but an old, dusty kimono. 

You were right. 

This place is godless. 

“You’re no familiar,” Gojo snarls, turning on Nanami. “Don’t even think to call yourself that. The difference between you and me is as clear as day, you vile beast. You’ll pay for your insolence with the loss of your shrine.” 

Nanami’s misery is written all over his face. You’ve realized what’s wrong with this shrine. It’s too quiet, as if no one has prayed here for generations. Haibara has been dead for a long, long time.

Nanami must have been lonely. 

“Don’t,” you tell Gojo.

He stares at you, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind?” 

You tug yourself out of Gojo’s arms. Nanami’s crouched on the ground, trying to shield Haibara’s old kimono from Gojo’s foxfire. You kneel to his level. 

“I’m sorry you’ve been lonely for all this time, Nanami. I can’t stay with you, but if you come to my shrine, we can play again.” 

Nanami weeps and reaches for your hand. The mark of the snake dissolves. 

Gojo doesn’t talk to you on the way back to the shrine.

“Don’t be mad,” you say, tugging on the sleeves of his kimono. He gives you a deadpan stare. “Come on! I only did it because-” 

You can’t finish your sentence. 

Of course, that piques Gojo’s interest. He can never resist bullying you. 

“Because? Go on,” he goads you. 

You say it so quietly he can’t hear you, even with his fox ears. He spins around, grabs you by the waist, and hoists you up so you’re face to face. You yelp and scramble to grab onto his shoulders for balance. 

“Louder,” he demands. “I can’t hear you.” 

“I was thinking about what would happen if I died and you were all alone again. I couldn’t leave him alone because I was thinking of you,” you tell him. Thinking of Gojo watching after an empty shrine all alone like Mizuki makes your heart ache for reasons you can’t explain. 

He stiffens. “What a strange thing to worry about. I wouldn’t care.” 

“Ugh,” you smack him in the shoulder. You shouldn't have tried to be kind to him. 

He doesn’t put you down, shifting you into an easier hold. “You’re hurt,” he admonishes when you try to squirm. 

Just before you enter the shrine gates, he has a confession of his own to make. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You got hurt because I wasn’t protecting you.” 

You rub his ears, an indulgence you’re not sure he would’ve allowed if he wasn’t in such a mood. “It’s not your fault!” 

“I’ve never had a human master,” he says. “I have to be careful not to break you. You’re so easily hurt.” 

“You don’t have to say it like that,” you say, and then the shrine spirits are there to welcome you home. 

You hadn’t realized you thought of the shrine as home until today. 

Even though Nanami’s mood isn’t affecting the weather anymore, it’s still raining. Gojo tells you not to mind the weather, even though you’re certain that it’s not from natural causes, which means it is your job. Ever since you came back from Haibara’s shrine, Gojo has been extra protective of you. 

You hadn’t thought Gojo had needed to be protected too, not until the thunder god came. 

The god of storms and lightning is called Getou Suguru. He carries a mallet in one hand that can transform whoever it touches into their younger forms, and he used to be Gojo’s best and only friend. He’s also the one who called a bounty on your head.

[lesservillain]

an on the outside story.

summary: a new edition to the family

“Too nice?” 

You raise a confused brow as you read the little info card on the outside of the kennel. The name “Killer” had caught your attention as you approached the barred door. When you saw the dog itself a chill ran down your spine.

This dog looked big. Like it could rip the head off of anyone for looking at it wrong. It sat quietly, the only dog not barking amongst those at the shelter. His eyes were on what you thought was you at first. But when you shuffled over slightly, you realize he’s looking right at Eddie, who stands behind you with a grin.

“Oh, yeah,” the kennel girl chimes in, “Killer’s owner wanted him to be their guard dog, did all the training and whatnot. But they said that he didn’t listen to them and was too nice, not the right fit for a guard dog. So they dumped him here with us.”

“Can we see him?” Eddie asks, a glint in his eyes as he approaches the kennel.

You whip your head around, looking at him incredulously. “What?”

“Yeah of course!” The girl seems excited that Eddie was interested in the dog. “He’s really such a sweetheart. And a huuuuge cuddle bug.”

“It’s name is Killer,” you whisper anxiously to Eddie, but he ignores you. You grab his hand, squeezing it nervously.

The girl goes to open the door, and you start to tense up. The dog watches quietly, eyes still set on Eddie. You feel nervous, afraid of what this dog might do to your fiancé if he gets the chance to. 

But, once the door to the kennel finally opens, its whole personality flips. Suddenly he’s tapping his feet and jumping around playfully as the kennel girl greets him. When she waves for you to come in, Eddie’s hand slips from yours and he takes a step in. 

“Hey there, buddy,” he says in that chipper tone people talk to animals with, “Aren’t you just a handsome man.” Killer gets excited, turning in a circle and giving a deep bark. Eddie kneels down to his level, giving him head scritches and ear rubs. “All big and scary on the outside, but you’re just a big ol’ softie, aren’t cha.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” you say sarcastically, taking a cautious step into the kennel. You crouch down next to Eddie and Killer just about loses his mind when he starts getting attention from two people at once. He flops over on his belly, letting you scratch while Eddie pats him on the chest, playing him like a drum.

The three of you play for a while in his kennel. The way Killer carries his toys so very softly in his mouth makes you giggle. You also learn quickly that tennis balls make him lose his shit after taking him out to his run.

When the kennel assistant comes to check on you, you and Eddie look at each other. “Can we get some adoption papers?”

On the way home, Eddie wants to stop at the pet store. Killer came with a spiked collar and chain leash but you decided to leave them behind, opting to use one of the leads given by the shelter. Killer didn’t pull at all, but Eddie wanted to start running with him the next morning, so a proper collar and leash were needed.

“He’d been cooped up in that kennel for how long? Yeah, trust me babe, I know that feeling. He’s gonna love running, aren’t cha, Bud?” Eddie reaches into the back seat where Killer pants happily, patting him on the head. You’re glad you put a blanket down with how much he’s drooling back there. 

Once inside, you pick out a nice leather lounging collar for the house, and Eddie picks out a good harness for him when you’re out and about. The both of you take Killer down the toy isle and let him pick out some toys, and he goes absolutely bananas as he tries to fit as many toys in his mouth as he can. 

When you get to the checkout area, you stop when you see the tag machine. “We should probably get him one of those in case he gets out. Like put his name and our address on it.” Eddie agrees, the three of you standing in front of the machine. Looking through the options, you decide the classic bone shape is the best, and all that's left is to input the name. 

Neither of you moves, looking at the little keyboard as it waits for your input. You look over at Killer, then to Eddie, who seems to have the same thought as you. 

“Okay so what are we going to call him then?” You laugh. 

“Uh, what about…Rex?” 

“Rex,” you scrunch up your nose, “he’s not a Rex. Right buddy?” 

Killer’s ears perk up as you talk to him, almost dropping the duck toy from his mouth. 

“Fine, you got any ideas?” He crossed his arms. 

“Hmmmmmm,” you place a hand on either side of Killer’s big head and peer into his eyes. You rub his ears as you think, feeling the density of his noggin in your palms as you look him over. A smile makes it way on your lips, and you look at Eddie matter- of-factly. 

“His name is Bear,” you say, standing up straight, facing Eddie. 

“Bear?” 

“Yep, he told me.” 

Eddie looks down to now Bear, stares at him for a moment, and then nods his head. “Yeah, his name is Bear.”

And Bear has no issues when you bring him home. He really was well behaved, knowing a lot of tricks and commands, including bumping his nose on the back door to tell you to let him out. Eddie even played fetch with him while you cooked dinner.

When Wayne stopped by to drop something off, Bear was instantly on him, begging for attention. Wayne was pulling his old grumpy man act, but you saw him give bear some ear scritches when he thought no one was looking.

 As soon as its time for bed, Bear gets comfy at the end of your bed on his new dog bed. You’re under the covers as you watch Eddie bend down and talk to Bear. 

“Goodnight, Bear. I’m sorry you had to be locked up for so long. Your new mommy knows how to make a guy feel at home, though, so I think you’ll be just fine.”

[tiajk]

Amazon reader (cross guild version)

images from @charliethechandelure

warnings: Buggy being bullied, strong amazon reader, fem! reader

A/n: this made me jump up in joy

tagged: @0alk0msan

masterlist

– They’re all down bad for you as much as they are for each other

– Mihawk thinks your skills with swordsmanship him and zoro are exactly the same

– Buggy wants you to be in one of his acts but you kindly let him know that your not really interested in the circus

– Your the sweetest to buggy sure crocodile and mihawk are nice to him in there own way but he needs actual plain and have someone to be able to confide in

– so with that buddy gets daily hugs from you and when you compliment him and he thinks your lying you use your lasso of truth to assure him that you would never lie to him

– Crocodile has to warm up to you at first he’s a bit hesitant about a strong person like you because he js has trust issues

– They all love that they have you as a friends bc they’ve seen you in battle and your pertrafrying to them when you upset or angry

— if you somehow have interactions with the straw hats with them (you do) they aren’t surprised but there surprised that you keep in contact with them still

— crocodile definitely calls you princess all the time because of who you are and your position

— Buggy does appreciate your honesty with everything he’s happy that your not mean to him and saves him whenever crocodile and mihawk bully him like a child

— Crocodile does doesn’t like when you always have water on you so that you can hug him

— Mihawk does challenge you sometimes only for training purposes when you beat him he’s astonished but also turned on slightly

— When they all learn your not just a normal amazon but the princess of thyemiscira they kinda freak out

— Crocodile will go calling you princess no matter what

— Mihawk doesn’t really have an reaction to you being princess but he does respect you more from it

— Buggy oml he’s fascinated mostly because of the treasure. ur when you tell him that he won’t be able to find your home because it’s hidden he gets sad but gets over it because he has you

— I cannon that you would be a warlord but if your not then thats cool too

— they definitely use you as scary dog privilege and when i mean they i mean buggy he can fight but he likes having someone else do it for him

— But in the end they love you and you love them

[tojiscrack]

Guess who found your fic on ao3 at 11pm, not noticing the 108k words on the bottom and got so hooked even by the half quarter of the first chapter that resulted in her staying awake until 10 am, reading all 108k words in one sitting. Yes me. Me, who got so hooked she read it all in one sitting. Me, who’s now so emotionally attached to this fic that she’s anxious about your comments under the chapters, stating that THE MAIN PLOT hasn’t even STARTED YET. Me, who knows DAMN WELL the little caterpillars and butterflies and the moths story Megumi and y/n read out is for sure foreshadowing. Me, who’s noticed several butterfly symbolism used over the course of the story. Me, who screamed into her pillow when it was stated that y/n’a dress resembled a butterfly. Me, who’s seen your comment replying to someone, stating that there MIGHT be some kind of drifting apart. Me, who’s well ware of the Heavy Angst tag on the fic. Me, who knows that an author who’s this good at delivering humor and fluff is gonna DESTROY me when the angst is gonna be written. Me, who half regrets now that she’s discovered the story because she’s scared of all that’s about to come.

You seriously have a way with words, dialogue, symbolism, humor, the bond between every character. It’s not so simple to put more than 5 characters in a setting and deal with them all while trying to make it as natural as possible but you SOMEHOW do it SO WELL. I’m just. God. All the thoughts I have on this fic would maybe even rival the 108k words you’ve written up until now but I don’t have the capacity to put them into words as well as you do.

just know that this fic impacted me so much, so badly, years from now on after it's finished, I'll still think about it and re-read it.

so excited (and scared as hell ngl) to see where you'll be going with this story. I may havw joined late but I am sticking around till the end.

love you, great work <3

liar, liar masterlist here:

yayyy, another ao3 reader 😫 welcome to the tumblr crew, i’m so glad you’re hereeee ❤️‍🩹

i had to go back and check whether it really is 108k words and i found myself shocked bc damn, i really wrote that much? 😭 if i put half the effort i put into this story into my essays instead, maybe i’d be a better student but we live and we learn ig 😬

“emotionally attached” to the fic is mind blowing to me 🥹 i didn’t know it’d have this big of an impact on someone but i can’t say i’m displeased. that’s one of the nicest things i’ve heard on here (among other things ofc). ugh, you’re so nice for sending a message on that 🩷

and yes, you are absolutely right. the main plot does not start until next chapter (or more accurately — in terms of drama — somewhere down the line AFTER that) 👀 idk which comment i said that on but i trust ur judgement ‘cause i remember mentioning that somewhere 😭 DON’T BE SCARED, IT’LL BE FUN (and thrilling and scary) BUT STILL 😊

the butterfly thing you mentioned is interesting, actually 🫢 maybe i just really like butterflies (even tho they scare the ever living shit out of me and i nearly killed a few in the london zoo YEARS ago as a child cuz i was fidgeting since they just let them roam free in that greenhouse thingy and i was scared for my life and dying of heat with the humidity?).

YOU MUST HAVE BEEN STALKING MY PAGE BC I DO REMEMBER SAYING SMTH ALONF THOSE LINES I JUST CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE 😭 but i invite you to continue doing so bc i like watching my lovely little liars squirm and then send in their predictions and fear 😋 and this long, juicy message has me giggling to myself and REELING 🤭

yeah, but we’re not holding back on the heavy angst tag… er… buckle up? it’s gonna go downhill from here on out 😟

“you seriously have a way with words” — stop.

“it’s not so simple to put more than 5 characters in a setting and deal with them all while trying to make it as natural as possible but you somehow do it so well” — DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QUADRUPLE, INFINITY STOP OR I’LL CRY 🥹 no one has ever said that about my writing, and in fact, i hadn’t even noticed that myself 😭 i think i’m gonna levitate in glee ✨ to know it flows well enough for it to be commented on (out of ur own free will and not me pressing a gun to ur forehead), it’s just UGHHH so nice and sweet and i’m so glad you’ve joined the liar, liar community 😫 warmest welcome ml <3

gosh you’ve put this story on such a high pedestal, i’m almost scared i won’t be able to meet ur standards, even with everything planned beforehand 😟 but i’m willing to try. if you’re here for the super long ride (my updates are sporadic and will continue to be a such as the time goes on).

it was definitely not a LATE arrival per se — the liar, liar family is still pretty small. i’ve only got about 321 followers, so definitely not as much as the bigger jjk writers on here, and half of those are split between my megumi fic readers and levi fic readers. i now consider you an og just bc this analysis was so in depth and interesting, i found myself smiling so hard my cheeks hurt 🙂‍↔️

but i love you SO much for this. i’d love to see more comments and messages from you. don’t be afraid to spam me if you must (in fact, i encourage it!!!) 😁 i get so giddy and excited and motivated when ppl send me their predictions. it’s one of the greatest things about writing (and the best part imo).

have a lovely day! and i can’t wait for you to see the next chapter and what i have in store for you <3

[tiredfoxtf]

Wait give me possible headcanons/dynamics/thoughts for Grian/Dream because I want to see how much of them I can write

HELLO, THIS QUESTION IS FROM AUGUST, I AM SO SORRY, IT WAS A VERY HARD TIME, I WASN'T QUITE THERE AT THE TIME.

So!!!

Griwt to me are the most unserious serious people. They both fully capable and more than often have like little emotion to show and they also can be pretty scary when they want to. But ANYTHING makes them lose their composure and it's starts the laughing marathon.

They are also total menaces together to their friends. And often to each other too. I have like a thought that they play tickle tag when one of them feeling gremlin.

Also I think that they both very excited to learn things from each other. Like Dream will ask Gri to pwp with him promising to not be too sweaty, but in the end they get too heated, because although Gri says he isn't competitive, he just gets frustrated in situations when he always loses, but he gets heated even if Dream is obviously holding back or in disadvantage. He is Also sure that sometimes Dream just lets him win to keep his spirit going. But Gri doesn't really care at this point - he is having fun. And there's a similar situation in building for Dream - he gets overwhelmed very easily with everything so he prefers to leave it to someone who can actually do it. But Grian being very stubborn gave him like little tasks to do. Like figure out a pallet or use a few block to decorate something. He found that Dream enjoys these simple tasks.

But they still procrastinate on doing work together. sdfsd Well, actually it's Gri who procrastinates 90% of the time and he drags Dream with him on crazy stoopid adventures trying to kill time. They definitely pulled some crazy pranks with Dream's just random knowledge of Minecraft mechanics.

The meanier they are to each other the more you know they love each other. They are just built like this, they don't really do straight up affection. The most they do is reserved for rare moments of quiet for various of reasons. They are trying to help in the few ways they know.

[the-golden-comet]

✨OC Interview Tag✨

Thank you for the tag, @just-emis-blog and @pluppsauthor ! 💖✨

Okay, lovelies: you want to see an ACTUAL cinnamon roll? Someone so sickeningly sweet it’ll rot your whole mouth out? Time to bring out the most wholesome goody goody I know: Tenshi, from Tenshito.

I found my concept sketches of him YEARS ago…oh boy he is DUE for a redesign 😰

@wyked-ao3 , heard you liked angels. You might like him too, @sunglasses-in-the-bentley . This dude is INCREDIBLY Pit-coded ✨

Okay, enough of that. Now that you’ve seen fluff incarnate, on with the interview~

Were you named after anyone?

Yes~! My name actually translates to “angel.” I have to thank my mom, Amaterasu, for that one!

When was the last time you cried?

I-I stepped on a bug yesterday, and it took thirty minutes for Ita to calm me down.

Do you have any kids?

Mmmmnope. I’m still young for a celestial. In human I’d be…20.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

H-Huh? I don’t think I even know how to….

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

OH! Usually if they make me feel all warm and fuzzy to be around. Ita does that all the time! He’s so warm and nice….oh! And he beat up these two criminals the first night I crashed down in Hokkaido, so I know I’m safe with him 💖

What is your eye color?

A shocking blue!! I was given the gift of lightning like Raiden, but I’m…haha….s-still not quite sure how to use it. It makes Ita very nervous…

Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings!! Aaaaa, there was one time Ita turned on a scary movie and I couldn’t look up from his chest. I-I felt really embarrassed, but he was so kind about it. He let me snuggle up to him the rest of the night so I wouldn’t get nightmares. Funny, his whole face was so red….like a tomato! Haha….oh, I wonder if he wants me saying this….?

Any special talents?

Oh! I have my scepter! It can shoot a really cool lightning arc. I….may have caused a blackout in parts of Japan because of it….? D-Don’t tell my brothers….Mike will get FURIOUS….! I can also fly when I have my wings unfurled, but…for obvious reasons I can’t do that a lot, haha….~

Where were you born?

That part is still a mystery to me. I’m trying to find my mom for more answers, but it’s kind of hard to get in touch with a sun god…figures, huh?

Do you have any pets?

Umo!!! He’s my pet dove familiar. He’s actually how my brothers were able to send me letters, but he’s a good boy who didn’t tell them my location, nor did he let them put a tracker on him. I have seed for him whenever he visits, and if I can pull it off, we do a flight together 🕊️

What sort of sports do you play?

Uh….I don’t know, actually? Does flying count as a sport?

How tall are you?

164 centimeters~! ✨

What was your favorite subject in school?

Awww, I really didn’t like school, mainly because Mike was my teacher, and he’s STRICT. He made me learn all sorts of boring angel stuff like “don’t go to these dimensions” this or “don’t cross the rainbow bridge” that. However, I REALLY liked my Earth Studies. That’s…kind of the reason why I came here…heh.

What is your dream job?

OH!! Ita got me a part-time job working in a small library in Gaijin, and I LOVE it! It’s really quiet, but we get a little traffic since we’re next to a diner. When I’m not helping customers find books or sweeping the floor, my boss lets me read. There’s SO many cool things about Earth!! Did you know that you have separate cook books for jasmine rice and brown rice recipes? THAT’S AMAZING!!! ✨✨✨

Check your teeth for cavities. Tagging (no pressure): @autism-purgatory , @fortunatetragedy , @thatuselesshuman , @zackprincebooks , @pippinoftheshire , @finickyfelix , @justabigoldnerd , @lychhiker-writes , +open tag for whoever wants to join! ✨

[blackbutlerfandomnerddomain]

In "Kalim's Harem", if our Sunshine Boy was a Trans Boy, what do you think each of the boys would react to when they found out?

AWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!

So I have a lot of TWST trans headcanons so first off I'll name my personal ones (reminder everyone these are my headcanons if you don't agree or like then that's fine, you have your thoughts I have mine)

Riddle is FtM transgender who I sometimes swap in headcanon as nonbinary

Ace if FtM transgender who just got his top surgery before NRC

Cater's Cater and we all should be happy for it ^w^

Both Jade and Floyd are Intersex

Azul's nonbinary to me (I dunno octopi's anatomy is weird and I love it)

Jamil's Nonbinary but didn't come out until after Chapter 6

Vil is a genderqueen GOD

Epel's FtM transgender

Neige's in the closet of questioning (I have always been open with headcanons of him from him being trans, aroace, vegan, secretly a bitch, so that's why I wrote it like that. He's still learning things outside scripts and knowing himself)

Idia I always view as questioning but doesn't really care about pronouns, just doesn't want to deal with the whole thing of picking where he is and coming out

Same for Ortho but Ortho's just happy being Ortho

Lilia's a nonbinary bad-ass FIGHT ME

And sadly I'm not going to use my OCs Arie and Giles in this or @gay-salt-amber's OCs Esther and Amyir for this ask since the tags are glitchy for me but Esther's a beautiful wonderful enby vampy and Amyir is one hella fine and sweet Genderfluid demon

NOW ONTO THE HEADCANONS!

I think it's safe to assume Jamil knew for years

Unless you want to go the route Jamil started as Kalim's servant "friend" after he started going by he/him

In Night Raven, Kalim was very happy to be himself, but that didn't stop the slight fear of changing and someone comments on his body somehow or if someone finds his T-Shots or binder

Once he started attending classes and club activities, he started to learn he's not the only one who's different, which ease his heart and mind a bit

If Jamil knew, Jamil helped Kalim is so much of the transitioning and being carefully, even being the one who'd have to tell the teachers about it for Kalim after Kalim gave him permission, just so something comes up they can know how to handle it (periods, a malfunction with his binder or packer, someone said something, etc.)

If Jamil doesn't know, Kalim feels HORRIBLE hiding such a huge thing from his best friend

Once he started dating his lovers he became very aware he needs to come out to them properly

He does at his dorm

They all hug him and thank him for telling him

They all make sure Kalim's comfortable and not being harassed or feeling discomfort

The main protectors: Jamil, Riddle, Leona, Floyd, Rook, Sebek, and Lilia

Silver and Deuce are the worrying partners over every small thing

Ace, Riddle, and Epel are always prepared for any form of discomfort and dysphoria when it comes, also Trey and Cater but that's thanks to being here so long

Malleus once threw a dude who commented on Kalim's binder one hot day. He didn't know what it was and was confused why he was yeeted

Rollo's a bit confused by the term but he does lots of research and Kalim's open for any questions he has

One time Kalim got a few whiskers on his chin and he eagerly showed it off and was showered by so many compliments

Lowkey inspired by a real thing with my friend, Kalim had to use the foam version of his T-Shots and luckily hasn't ran out yet

When Jamil came out Kalim went shopping with him to help ease him and show he has an ally

Kind of saucy but Chenya once felt bolt and ask Kalim what sexual things are okay with and that unlocked like 10 to 20 minutes of a deep conversation of the subject cause turns out Kalim never thought of that before

The explore it safely and done very scary yet strong search results on the internet, communication is key in the end my friends

[greypetrel]

Fan Work Friday Saturday

Rules: If you're tagged, MAKE A NEW POST and showcase one fanartist or fanfic you recommend (with links), and tag someone to give their recs next! Don't forget to reblog the rec you were tagged in!

Thank you so much for the tag @dreadfutures! Saving the second for later on in the week. Listen I have a hard time choosing and I'll do these on repeat if I must.

Fanartist: @salsedinepicta

Starting with her, purely because it's litterally 10 years of me being 👀 at her art, and I do love the way she mixes pictorical techniques with swirly, 2D lines. I am not a fan of pink+green combination, BUT when she does it. Add a lot of historical references and clothing and an expressive use of colour. I'm an absolute sucker for all artstyles that just looks like three paintstrokes thrown at a paper (digital or traditional) and she does that. And, she's a wonderful human being too, which really helps. <3 (she'd hate the attention but let me Will Smith meme her.)

Fanfic: To The Bone, by @shivunin

Rating: M Words: 48,373 Pairing: Cullen/Inquisitor Lavellan Summary: Depending on who you ask, either Sylaise or Andraste set a mark of fire on those who are destined to find each other. No matter how curious each of them is, neither Lavellan nor Cullen are especially eager to actually go looking for this person. Either luck or fate draws them both to the Inquisition anyway.

I debated high and low what of her fics to start from. I chose To The Bone because it's a soulmate AU. And I generally don't like Soulmates AU. But this one? Mo has a way to turn tropes and clichès around in a way that just makes them relatable, visceral and real. The way she renders human fragility and vulnerability is really heart-clenching. I know I always fangirl over her work but it bears repeating. To the Bone is played more than a Soulmate AU -it is important, but not the main focus, which tricks me into loving this- as a big story of two hurt people who needs to learn to trust someone with their own vulnerability. It's all about learning that you can trust other people, and exactly how scary a decision it is, how much it feels like a jump in the blue.

It's relatable, it's gritty, it's not the peak angst Mo can reach (for that, get a lot of tissues and click on Wander the Drifting Roads.), but it was the first of her works I read and it has a special place in my heart. For its themes, for its main character (can I hug her?) and also and particularly because it's a trope I generally don't like. And I do like to be stand corrected.

Tags under the cut!

You two whom I mentioned, if you want consider this a tag too! :)

Also: @melisusthewee @dreadfutures @inquisimer @blarrghe @blightbear @star--nymph @pinayelf @dungeons-and-dragon-age @ndostairlyrium @hollytree33 @theluckywizard and YOU

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Sky Full of Stars - Chapter Nine.

Huge thanks to those of you still reading this! It's so strange when I come to post, as in the writing we are well into part three of the story and currently six years ahead of this time, and so much is different to how it was back here! I can't wait to share that with you all :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

Tag list - In the comments

Words - 4,136

Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI!

Waking up in her bed, for a second his brain tricked him into thinking she’d still be there, Adrien reaching to find nothing but an empty space. He sighed a little, looking at the time on his phone. Eight ten in the morning. It’d be one twenty-five in the afternoon in England, where she’d flown to three days before to begin filming, his own five-week stint in France to film Midnight in Paris beginning the following week.  

His flight was two days from then, but he had a few commitments in the city planned prior to leaving, so had stayed at hers since his place was such a haul to get to and from. Five hours drive, or an hour and a half flight and then fifty minutes by car from Syracuse airport. It made sense to stay put.  

One particular commitment he was looking forward to took place later that day, meeting someone he hadn’t seen since before Christmas, someone who when she glanced up from the table as he approached, looked a thousand times healthier than she had before.  

“Homeslice!” Jen spoke warmly, standing to give him a huge hug after he’d placed his tea down. 

“Hey you. God, you look amazing! It’s so good to see you,” he replied, kissing her cheek. And hell, she truly did. She had colour in her face, her eyes were bright, and her smile lit up the entire room. It was about a million miles away from the pale, heroin sick mess he remembered seeing in the hospital back in Pittsburgh. Also, she’d gained a few pounds in weight, and it suited her. She was still slight in frame, but definitely less scary thin than she had been. 

She was dressed so differently too compared to on tour Jen, wearing a pair of grey skinny jeans and an ecru coloured sweater that sloped off one shoulder, the only thing remotely rock and roll about her look being the reveal of her half sleeve of tattoos, as well as a smudge of smoky eyeliner. 

“Thanks, man. Got that fresh outta rehab glow!” Indeed, fresh out she was, leaving the facility the week before, staying a little longer than she’d originally intended in order to feel completely certain that she was strong enough in her tentative recovery to do so.  

She’d been in regular contact with Jade, also talking to him a lot over the phone as well, the pair striking up a friendship, much to his girlfriend’s joy. It was important her favourite people got along well. Truly, what had happened had bonded them on a very special level, Jen knowing she could never, ever repay such.  

Sitting down, her face crumpled a little, waving her hand dismissively as she began to sniff. “Ignore me. I’m okay, I’m alright. I’m just so grateful to you. You saved my life, man. That’s like, the biggest deal there is.” 

“Hey, come on,” he spoke, grasping her hand, his face softening. “I did what anybody would have done, finding you like that.” Gracious as always. Jen squeezed his hand tightly before letting go, picking up her coffee as he continued. “So, how are you finding being out in the world again?” 

“Difficult,” she confessed, widening her eyes a fraction. “I’ve learned so many coping tools now though, how to get through situations that would previously have made me use. Still, doesn’t stop me from missing it.”  

“I meant to ask you over the phone, but I take it that it’s nixed you being able to take opioids for your back now, right?” 

She nodded. “Yeah, I can’t even risk using anything derivative. It’s a slippery slope, man.” 

He could well imagine. “Do you mind if I ask you why you turned to heroin? Tell me to butt out if you want. I tried to ask Jade if she had any ideas, but yeah. She shut it down immediately.” 

She laughed softly, shaking her head. “She handled it about as well as I expected her to. Is she still blaming herself for not noticing?” 

“Oh yeah,” he revealed, eyebrows fluttering upwards as he scratched his chin. Trying to tell her otherwise had fallen on deaf ears, as they both knew it would. For him at least, it was becoming a concern. Her coping mechanisms for distress were not healthy, and it worried him, how much she internalised what caused her pain. 

“She needs not to. I was a sneaky son of a bitch with it, man. As for why, yeah, you can ask. You’re the one who found me OD’ing, I fucking owe you that much, Adrien.” Sipping her coffee, she took a breath, ready to tell all to who truly was the first person outside of her immediate family and therapy circle. He made it easy, though. Jade was right; he was a fantastic listener, as she’d discovered through tentatively getting to know him on tour and over the phone while in rehab.  

“Taking the pain pills, it wasn’t all about my gnarled up back, dude. It’s like, I have all of this crazy energy constantly whirling, I always have. It’s why my dad - may he rest - was the first person who put a set of drumsticks in my hand when I was six. I was always tapping, tapping, tapping, y’know? Except dad happened to notice it with a natural rhythm.” 

Adrien nodded, listening without interruption as she took it back much further than he was expecting.  

“He thought it’d occupy me, learning to drum, burn out a little of my zany energy, and it did to a degree. But nothing ever stopped the noise in my head, which I’ve since learned has been me suffering from high functioning anxiety for pretty much most of my life, man. The therapist I saw in rehab really helped me identify it all, dug to the root cause. Smack eventually became my outlet for shutting my brain off so I could fucking sleep.  

“I didn’t make it easy on myself, snorting blow as much as I was to shake the sluggish feeling I had. At first, I was just shooting up a few times a month, when being drunk or naturally exhausted didn’t work. It was the classic thinking of not seeing I had a problem, because it was only once in a while, y’know? Addicts, they ain’t always like those dudes from that movie Trainspotting. It can look different. This chick I met at the centre, she was a fucking CEO of a massive company, shooting up at the weekends to just feel all floaty and nice for the afternoon before returning to her life.  

“She was like me, though. Not a longstanding user, but got more regular, and then she fucked up and took too much. I won’t be fucking up again, because I fucking love my life and having been so close to leaving it, it frightened the shit outta me, man. Again, I am so fucking sorry for putting you through that. I know I’ve told you a million times, but I gotta make my peace with it, that it was a guy who I barely knew as you were back then, my best friend’s boyfriend, no less, who found me.”  

God, she was such a force. Her revelations made him see her in a completely different light to how he once had. She still had that energy about her, but it was tempered now, probably down to her finally receiving the correct treatment for her anxiety, he guessed. “I think you’re really something, just seeing you had a problem and dealing with it so head on. No hiding, no denial, just like, ‘yep, this is what’s wrong, and this is what I gotta do to fix it.’ That’s a really admirable trait.”   

A shy smile danced across her mouth, Jen running her hand through her long, wavy hair. “If my shit needs fixing, then I’m not gonna run and hide from it. Can’t do that and not expect the inevitable implode.”  

He looked a little uncomfortable for a second, in indecision whether to voice what was on his mind. Luckily for him, Jen read him like a book. “She does it, we both know that she does, and yeah. You ain’t the only one who wishes she didn’t.” Taking a deep breath, she puffed her cheeks out, smiling thinly. “To be fair to her, it’s a behaviour she’s fallen into without much checking from those closest to her. We all did, man. Us girls, I think from a very young age, we didn’t hold one another accountable for our shit, y’know?” 

“No, I don’t,” he smiled, a little baffled. “Explain?” 

“So, you know how young we all were when we first started out. We were seventeen when we cut our first album, except for Jess at sixteen. We were kids, still. Children! And we got thrown into the machine, these five babies who were catapulted to huge fame so damned early. Too early, man.  

“With every person who praised us though, there were another five wanting to cut us down, from critics even to contemporaries in some cases. It bonded us so tightly, protecting one another from it. I think we took care of each other so damned much, that we never saw our flaws, or we let each other get away with it more than we should have. I'm not saying it’s anybody else’s fault other than our own, like me and my addiction, Katie being very aggressive when she sets her mind to it, or Jade being a control freak who internalises her pain, but yeah. It’s what we did.”  

He remembered back to how he’d felt at seventeen, and then tried to apply how he would have coped if his fame had begun right there and then, going from a nobody to someone effectively shot out of a canon into such huge prominence. It made him shudder. No wonder they’d bonded so closely. “That actually makes a lot of sense, that you’d protect each other to that kind of degree. I worry about her still continuing to do it though, at almost thirty-two. I know I haven’t been on the scene long, but your friend? She means the world to me.” 

A happy grin illuminated her mouth, reaching to cup his face momentarily with both hands. “You’re such a good fucking guy, Adrien. I’m glad she’s found you, because some of her exes...” she trailed off, letting out a long breath through gritted teeth. “Ivan was definitely the worst, because of what happened, but yeah. There were some straight up douchebags for a time. Of course, she blamed herself for all of it going wrong, because that’s her.” Pausing she fiddled with the handle of her coffee mug. “There’re things I could tell you, but you should probably hear it from her, y’know? Except...”  

“Except she isn’t likely to tell me until she stops panicking that she’s gonna mess up what she has with me, too?” he offered, watching her nod deeply.  

She pointed a well-manicured finger at him. “Bingo, dude. I mean, she does seem like she’s settling to the idea. Probably because she can see that you’re not a douchebag like the rest were. You don’t have any red flags she’s actively ignoring. In fact, the only thing she’s mentioned so far that’s negative is that you sometimes give her tummy ache with that big ole’ cervix banger you have between your legs!” 

It was an unfortunate moment for him to finish his tea, snorting with laughter into the cup and almost choking. “Oh, god,” he groaned, wiping a hand down his face as he felt his cheeks warm a little. “You girls, shit. You all probably know much more about my junk than I’m comfortable with.”  

She barked a laugh, thinking how adorable he was, how easily embarrassed he got. “Yeah, but it’s all good, man. All good!” Pausing, her smile crinkled her eyes, cocking her head. “She thinks you hang the moon and stars, my gal. She’s really in it with you.”  

He nodded. “I do know, yeah. It's nice to hear it confirmed from one of the people closest to her, though. I haven’t ever met anybody like her. She’s so ridiculously lovely, so down to earth as well. One thing I really like about her is just how normal she is. There’s nothing pretentious about the woman. Just before Christmas, she mentioned that she was going out for lunch with her friend Tony while I was heading to an interview. I opened her apartment door and there’s Anthony fucking Bourdain standing there! Or the time I came downstairs shortly before she went away and she’d just chilling on the couch, drinking tea with Iggy Pop like it’s the most normal thing in the world.” 

She shrugged lightly, playing with the little empty packet of sugar next to her coffee mug. “It is for her. She doesn’t see people’s fame; she just sees them.”  

Of course, she did. It was what had drawn him to her so much when they first met. “That’s if she even knows who they are. I’m still not over the whole Dalai Lama thing. God, I nearly ruptured something when she told me about it!” 

Throwing her head back, her laughed filled the space. “Ahh, shit, yeah, yeah. That was the best one I think she’s ever done! There I was, man, on the side of a dirt road in Kathmandu, crying with laughter at her.” 

Their coffee date wrapped up shortly after, the pair moving to their next destination. They were heading to watch The Conversation, the film that Jade had taken a pause in touring from to film, and which had premiered in the US two days before, the lady herself attending the London premiere the previous evening. It was her first major role, playing Lydia Todd, a prolific serial killer confined to a psychiatric unit, starring across from Edward Norton, the FBI profiler tasked with conducting a series of interviews with her.  

Adrien had been looking forward to it just as much as Jen, both taking a seat at the back, chatting quietly while they waited for the lights to dim. For the following ninety-seven minutes, they were glued to the screen, the performance of the woman they both adored absolutely flooring them. The way she played creepy, calculated, yet a little vulnerable wrapped up in a bow of somebody who was horrifically psychologically damaged was flawless.  

“What we’re watching,” he leaned to whisper in Jen’s ear, “is the movie that’ll put our girl on the map.”  

He wasn’t wrong. The critical acclaim Jade received in the weeks that followed had the industry buzzing, her name and status in the acting world elevated hugely. There she was, riding a huge wave of success, and he couldn’t be there to celebrate that with her by her side until March. He counted the weeks, then the days of Skype calls, phone conversations and hundreds of text messages keeping them both going, until before they knew it, she was jumping into his arms again. 

“Oh, my life, I missed you even more this time around than the last!” she exclaimed, her bum being squeezed in his big hands as he carried her through her apartment, sharing kisses, thrilled to be wrapped around him again. “And I want to show you just how much, but I need a shower. I smell of armpits and plane.” 

“Alright, I guess I’ll reluctantly put you down.”  

It wasn’t for long, though. After washing and working shampoo from her hair, she was rinsing the conditioner out when she heard the bathroom door open. “Couldn’t wait, hmm?” 

The shower door opened, his body pressing to hers, arms encircling her as his mouth buried against her neck. “Not even for another second.”  

That hunger was matched, her arm winding back, hand sinking into the soft of his dark hair, hair she couldn’t believe had grown so much in two months. A sigh poured from her sensuous lips like wine as his hands gently squeezed her tits, nipples pinched to pebbles, his cock hardening against the small of her back.  

Her skin skittered with the hum of reconnection as his hands lowered in an alluring glide over her wet skin, anticipation starting to melt down her spine. He didn’t leave her waiting on it for long, one hand descending to push into the heat of her folds, the other gently clutching beneath her jaw as he turned her head, leaning to plant a kiss of fire and honey upon her lips.  

Tingly heat prickled as his fingers glided through her folds, the sweet dew of her pussy slicking against his touch, a shuddered breath fluttering from his mouth to hers as she quickly began to gush against his fingers. Their want spiralled like a tornado, kisses becoming more urgent, her body wracked with shivers as he rubbed tight circles over her clit, her walls stinging with the need to feel him inside her. 

Turning, she wound her arms around his neck, Adrien lifting her, shunting her body against the tiles and without ceremony or warning, dropping her straight down onto his cock. He kissed the gasp the fell from her mouth, teeth nipping her lower lip, grunting low as her legs tightened around him. His fingers dug a hard clench beneath her thighs, driving up into her with force as the water cascaded down his back, lips sliding from hers to once again tease hot kisses against the column of her throat.  

Panting against his mouth, she stared him in the eyes, nails dragging through his hair, fingers clenching to tug gently. “God, you turn me on so much. You’re so fucking gorgeous.”  

Truly, he’d never felt as heavily coveted by a woman as he did the one who had completely captured his heart. She near constantly made him feel good about himself, not that he particularly suffered with confidence issues. It was always nice to hear how much he stirred her desire, though.  

Rutting into her core hard, he groaned deep as his mouth found hers again, lost in the eye of her storm even though truly, he was the one driving it, all the love, longing and need for her mingling and sending him mindless. The blaze of him caught at her edges, sent sparks skittering within her blood, his hips driving like a piston against her.  

It was too wild to last beyond pure, basic urgency, a heated fuck of primal need within the water and steam, sending them both soaring rapidly to their bliss. It ripped through her like a current, her nails clawing down his back, that feral edge toppling him as he spilled deep into her, teeth clamping upon the side of her neck. It glimmered through them gently in the wake of such intensity, tiny pin pricks suffusing, both panting hard as he set her back down to her feet, entwining as they kissed.  

Once out, dry and dressed, they headed out for dinner, both catching up with one another properly. 

“Seriously, do you have any idea how proud of you I am?” he began after they’d eaten, Jade moved to his side of the booth they’d been seated in, his arm draped around her shoulders. “Watching you as Lydia wasn’t like I was seeing you there. Jade was gone, it was all her, this complete other person.”  

To receive such praise from her extremely accomplished boyfriend, a man whose talent was so renowned, it honestly bowled her over completely. “I was so nervous about it. I worried constantly that I’d overplayed her in some moments and fallen victim to underplaying in others. She was so complex, and I wanted to do the nuance of the character justice, so hearing you say that really does set me at ease.” 

Kissing her head, he smiled widely. There was no bullshit with her, not false modesty. She honestly had fretted – and still was – over the performance that had earned her such critical acclaim. “You were amazing. I said to Jen that it was the movie that’d put you on the map, and I was right.”  

Turning to him, she rested her forehead to his, nuzzling him softly. “I love you so much.” 

“And I love you about a thousand times more, Moo.” 

Crinkling her nose, she shook her head. “Not possible.” 

“Yes, possible.” He kissed her softly, pointing at her. “Don’t argue with me.”  

Laughing, she reached for her drink, leaning into him as she finished it, the simple happiness of that moment something she knew would be remembered for a long time. They headed back to her apartment after that, walking the twenty minutes hand in hand, enjoying the weather beginning to finally warm as winter made way for the imminent arrival of spring.  

Once in her building, she checked her mailbox, Adrien telling her he’d forgotten to collect it for the last couple of days. As expected, it was full. 

“Look at this!” she exclaimed, yanking the bundle out. “She’s nine months pregnant with post!” Her words made him laugh, finding himself playfully whacked upon the shoulder with the clutch of letters as they walked into the elevator.  

Placing the letters down on the counter in the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of wine from the rack, Adrien disturbed from kissing the side of her neck by his phone ringing.  

“It’s my dad, I’ll be in the lounge.” 

She smiled, pouring a glass and placing it into his hand. “Okay, sexy mans. Tell him I said hi.” 

He winked before turning, Jade pouring herself a glass before sorting through the pile. Invites to gala’s, functions, other celeb-type events all in the form of fancy cards sent in decadent looking envelopes, and amongst them, a handwritten one. The postmark stated Omaha, Jade frowning as she slid her thumb under the sealed join, trying to figure out who she knew in the Nebraskan city, the realisation suddenly hitting her when she took in the handwriting.  

It was the neat scribe that had written three years' worth of lovely birthday and Christmas cards to her, from a woman whom she had been very fond of, once upon a time. What reason did Polina Kuznetsova have to contact her now, though? 

“Dear Jade, 

I am contacting you on behalf of my son, for of course he cannot. I truly do hope this letter finds you well. Ivan is doing great in prison; his father and I are very proud of his progress after being so very ashamed in the aftermath of the way he treated you. Please, do not think my words in this letter will ever condone what he did, for I do not, but you must understand a few things. The steroid use, it changed who he was. It did. You know that as well as I do. He was night and day in difference, the man he was when using and when he was not. He feels much remorse for how he treated you, and he wants for you to reach out and contact him. His details are included below.  

You two made a wonderful couple, and he wishes to build something again with you in view to eventually reconnect and repair the damage he did upon his release. I think that you should consider this, I honestly do. He still loves you, and to be brutally honest, you both had blame in the relationship. You put your career before him time and again, and I cannot blame him for being hurt over that...” 

She didn’t need to read the rest, the words from a woman who might have said she didn’t condone her son’s actions, but didn’t give a damn enough to even for one second consider what her letter would do to a woman who truly - not that she’d admit it - wasn’t over what had happened to her. Her words about the blame, too. It hit her like a knife to her chest... 

“You never make time for me, Jade! Always this tour, or that movie! You on the move constantly, that’s why it happened! It was your fault that we...” 

The panic of it, his voice in her head, everything she’d so tightly pushed down began to rise. It was too much. Her limbs felt light and tingly, the breath stolen from her lungs, turning to grab her bag. It was without stalling or thought that she ran from her home, back out into the New York night, needing to be alone as her emotions crashed within like a bomb.  

It was beyond her completely that who she should have run to was the one she’d left behind in her apartment.  

[coffee-in-that-nebula]

15 Questions ✨

I was tagged by @curator-on-ao3! Thank you so much! ❤️

1. Are you named after anyone?

Yes. Two first names: Danae - Konstadina (meh). The second one is my grandma's, and my parents gave it to me so she wouldn't be mad at them. Plot twist: she still got mad at them, because everyone called me 'Danae' since day 1.

2. When was the last time you cried?

A few days ago, but it was happy tears. Someone made me cry with the lovely things they said to me. ❤️

3. Do you have kids?

Nope.

4. What sports do you/have you played?

A lot as a student because I had to, but nothing I did willingly, lmfao. I also prefer working-out like @curator-on-ao3.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Yes. A lot. I'm not for the weak.

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

Their energy/vibes. Irl, if they smile and are kind too.

7. What's your eye color?

Dark brown, but still alluring smh.

8. Do you prefer scary or happy endings for movies?

Happy endings!

9. Any talents?

I'd say so. Writing, but also my adaptability and sense of humor.

10. Where were you born?

Greece.

11. What are your hobbies?

Writing, learning Spanish, bullet journaling, tarot, collecting crystals, the bland ones like reading and watching movies, blogging, yoga, coloring, and I've recently started digital drawing - I'M AWFUL.

12. Do you have any pets?

YESSSS. Frodo the doggo.

13. How tall are you?

1.68 cm. 5'6' for my American friends.

14. Favorite school subject?

Ancient Greek, lmfao. Not because I teach it, but...

15. Dream occupation?

Author, obviously. I wouldn't mind to be able to be a full-time proofreader/editor too without the need to do more gigs/jobs to maintain a respectable income.

Tagging: @cnrothtrek @sparkleplatypuswriter @thresholdbb @cherry-jamx @negative-speedforce

@cheile @go-tell-the-bees @autistiqueer-0 @groovy-lady @lizzieisblonde

and anyone else who wants to play!!! You're not obligated to answer by any means and, again, sorry if I'm forgetting anyone!